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the morning passes, we're hardly tired

Summary:

Of all the trials she’d been set since she had come to the White Tower, somehow the most impossible was to lie beside Siuan in her gauzy nightdress, to feel the shape of Siuan’s body against her own in bed drowsy and supple with sleep-heat. On some nights when the fire was high, a faint seal of sweat would form between them like a kiss in places where their bare skin touched, and she swore to herself that she’d forgo bedding with Siuan altogether, and never mind the cold. But somehow she never could.

Notes:

Work title comes from "She Loves Me That Way" by Grouper :-)

This piece is consistent with show casting/styling (aka Siuan has tattoos) but draws heavily on book lore, especially as it relates to Moiraine's family, that might get changed in the show. Moiraine and Siuan are already Accepted here; I couldn't find any information on when their birthdays or exactly what time of year they were raised, so I'd put them at about 19/20 and 18/19 respectively, since Siuan's wot.fandom.com page says she's a year younger than Moiraine.

This was unbeta'd and I read the entire wheel of time series, including new spring, at 1.5 speed via Youtube audiobooks uploaded by Vietnamese gaming channels, so apologies for any spelling or punctuation discrepancies.

Chapter 1

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“How quickly you could be thrown back to the terrible uncertainty of your youth!

For when she chose to remember her youth at all, she could scarcely dredge up an ounce of recollection about that daring meeting with the Wizard. She could recall far more clearly how she and Elphie had shared a bed on the road to the Emerald City. How brave that had made her feel, and how vulnerable too.”-Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I am learning a lot in this year of my life…” -Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

 

 

 

They were, she thought very strange dreams. 

 

She was reading in the library in a shaft of dusty sunlight. It was a book on city planning and Ogier groves, and at any other time it might have interested her very much, but she couldn’t focus for a second, for Siuan was standing very close to her and reading over her shoulder. Siuan was pressed so close against her that Moiraine could feel her friend breathing, and smell the sweet scent of her hair and neck. Each time Siuan inhaled, her chest pressed against the back of Moiraine’s arm, and every time Moiraine turned a page Siuan would lean forward and lick the outside curve of her ear. This thrilled her somehow, but unsettled her, too; she felt it was somehow improper, and one of the Brown Ajah librarians would come sweeping down the aisles to find them and punish them for it, though she could not say why. But when she turned to warn Siuan of that, her friend had disappeared. 

 

That was the first dream. Then, it seemed, there was no end to them.

 

She dreamed that Siuan was holding a pitcher of water to her mouth, but every time she tried to drink, the water spilled down the front of her dress. She laughed, embarrassed, but it felt oddly thrilling to lie with her head cradled in Siuan’s arms, the front of her summer shift transparent with wet. 

 

She dreamed she and Siuan rode Arrow through a dark and twisted forest, while Siuan, who hated horses, whispered something inaudible and constant in her ear and tugged at her hair and clothes. 

 

She dreamed Siuan was holding her aloft in great cushions of air that covered her entire body. It was soft and peaceful there, like being underwater, and when she opened her mouth the air curled inside like a tongue. 

 

She dreamed Siuan had sewn her a dress, but it kept slipping off her shoulders. 

 

She dreamed Siuan was knitting her into a net made of tiny silver stars. 

 

Then one night, sneaking back from the river with a bucket of live trout, they had come across two shadowy figures in the kitchen garden. Moiraine had suspected the usual combination of scullery maid and stablehand, but when they drew nearer she saw the figures were women. Women—girls, really—who she knew by sight, even in the rapidly falling twilight, although not by name. Novices, one a slight, copper-skinned girl who had a Domani look to her, the other a plump milk-skinned girl with a proud, lovely face who wore her hair in the Tarabonner style. They kissed with slow, deliberate intensity, their hands on each other’s waists, but as she watched, the pale-skinned girl took the Domani girl’s hand in her own and pressed it to the full curve of her breast, and they both giggled, and kissed each other again, hands moving up and down each other’s bodies like emissaries between countries. 

 

Moiraine had stared at them, transfixed. She had only seen public kisses between men and women, though those were usually at weddings, which were solemn, pompous affairs of state. Even her parents, when they were alive, had kissed each other fondly but chastely, always on the hand or the top of the head or on the cheek. And to do it here, where anyone could come upon them! She knew there were women who took other women as lovers, but she had never seen it, and it had always seemed a hazy abstract thing to her. But this was not abstract at all, and she was so transfixed by it that she scarcely even noticed Siuan tugging at her sleeve.

 

“What’s gotten into you?” hissed Siuan in her ear. “We’ll be skinned alive if they find out we’ve left the grounds. Move!” 

 

So they stole back into the Tower unseen. Siuan, for her part, seemed entirely unmoved by the tableau in the garden, even seeming confused when Moiraine suggested they might sleep in different beds that night. But when Moiraine glanced at her when Siuan thought she wasn’t looking, she saw that Siuan had her thinking look, that fixed gaze and dimpling of the brow she knew so well. 

 

That night she dreamed that Siuan stood naked and thigh-deep in a rushing river. She was trying to get Moiraine to join her, but the water was moving so fast that a great white froth swirled around her body, and she was afraid. She was no strong swimmer—in fact, she scarcely knew enough not to drown when her body breached water—and knew that if the river took her she would surely die. Siuan did not seem bothered by it, but Siuan had been around water all her life, and Siuan had always been the braver among them—stronger, too, and more clever. 

 

“Come in,” her friend was saying, “come in, and I’ll teach you to swim.” The words were innocent enough, but as she spoke Moiraine felt a great tugging feeling arch up inside her like a drawn bow, a surge of pressure so pleasant and strong she forgot everything about herself—where she was and who she was and what would happen if she went into the water. All she wanted was for the feeling to continue, and her eyes met Siuan’s, and in that moment she knew Siuan had caused it in her somehow, and that what she felt now was only a small part of what she might feel if she went to Siuan in the river. 

 

Then she woke, and for a moment she did not know where she was. A split second later she remembered—she was in Siuan’s room in the White Tower, and Siuan was sleeping beside her—and instinctively shifted herself away. She felt very strongly that their bodies could not touch, that Siuan if woke and felt Moiraine against her she would somehow know what she had dreamt and feel betrayed by it. 

 

She rose and went over to the washstand. The air was shaggy with humidity, and the water in the basin was lukewarm when she pressed it to her temples and to the back of her neck, though it helped a little when she splashed her face and hair. What she wanted was to return to her own room, but Siuan would surely notice her absence and want to know why she had left, and that would be far worse. She could not lie to Siuan, at least not well, and an attempt would force up all sorts of terrible questions. So she lay down on the very edge of the bed—not a small feat, since the Tower beds were uncomfortably narrow, even for Accepted—and wedged her pillow between their bodies, and tried her best to sleep, though, unsurprisingly, sleep did not come. 

 

She knew, of course, what the dream had meant. She had known what all of them meant, but they were vague enough that she could dismiss them—faint adolescent stirrings, the result of a body pressed against another body in bed. But the feelings in this one had been so strong. The place between her legs still pulsed with an echo of that great arching in her, and the memory of Siuan’s dream-nakedness seemed burned vivid as a night flower in her mind. Yes, she knew. 

 

So began her life as a double agent. 

 

***

 

At first it had been small things. She found the way Siuan chewed on the nib of her pen to be wonderfully louche, and the strength of her grip relative to the nimbleness of her fingers hinted at an attentive sensuality beneath her roguish charm. And beyond that, her friend seemed to possess a certain inner radiance that emphasized the pleasant harmony of her features, as though she were lit from within by the strength of her conviction. Adults looked at Siuan and smiled when she passed them. The Novices and Accepted all listened when she spoke, and even some of the sisters occasionally looked curious. 

 

She had an easy way with people that Moiraine lacked and was that rare thing—someone admired by both her juniors and her seniors. In another turning of the wheel, she might have been a powerful general, a great hero in times of war, or a just ruler in peacetime. In the Tower, Moiraine was certain Siuan would be a Sitter, and perhaps even Amyrlin one day. She had sensed this almost from the moment they met, and so it caused her no shame that Siuan, the lowborn and younger between them, was the leader in their small cadre of two. 

 

Small things at first, but more and more often she found herself immobilized by the strength of her wanting, which was all the more terrifying for being new. She was nineteen years old and experiencing the throes of passion for the first time in her life, and it seemed to her some living creature had made its home in the expanse of viscera between her throat and her stomach. She lay in bed thinking of how it might feel to kiss the gentle curve of Siuan’s shoulder, the outside of her arm. How sweet it would be to be Siuan’s lover and kiss her there, to touch the black ink on her collarbones with her hands and then with her tongue, to lick the insides of her wrists and kiss her fingers and her palms. 

 

When she thought of Siuan in that way it was always of Siuan with a strange man, some shadowy other figure. She did not—could not dream of Siuan with a woman, and certainly not with herself, for that would be preposterous. It was Siuan’s pleasure she thought of, the sounds she might make, the feelings that must course in her, the little strangled sounds as his mouth closed around her nipple, the surprise and pleasure of being touched, entered, her dark eyes shining, even forgetting to grin. He would kiss the pulse of her throat and lick down the long warm expanse of her neck and she would shiver, her head falling back, rising to him. He would bow his head and take the hard buds of her nipples in his mouth one by one and she would shiver at the feeling, the throbbing ache it started in her, her hands closing in his hair and pulling tight…

 

Siuan was so composed, so clever. Even her roughness worked in her favour, to soothe any resentment from the other girls that might come against her. But who was there left for her to admire? She needed someone to lose herself in, someone to fill her with pleasure, someone with whom she could be tender and small. Moiraine wanted that for her friend so desperately. Light, but she wanted it!

 

She felt such a deep tenderness for that man, whoever he was—maybe a Warder, a husband, or perhaps someone Siuan had known before—because he gave her pleasure. It soothed her to imagine that one day Siuan would marry, that she would know those feelings. When she lay alone in her room, squeezing her thighs together or rocking against the bunched-up coverlet, it seemed that she thought only of Siuan, and more, the hope that Siuan might feel those things too. The sweet wonderful ache of the climax—the source, she had discovered, of the tugging feeling that had come to her in that dream of Siuan and the river— where the mind disappeared completely, and the languorous bliss that followed. Had Siuan known that feeling? It soothed her to imagine her friend that way, her dark eyes closed, mouth open in a rictus of pleasure; the view of a lover.

 

But then even that was not enough. She felt she chafed even at the thought of Siuan talking to other women, though it made her feel heavy with shame. Myrelle was clever and sharp and far more worldly than Moiraine, and Sheriam was kind where Moiraine was prickly and distant, and Ellid was so beautiful that Moiraine sometimes found it hard to look at her. Siuan had an easy way with women that Moiraine lacked, and moved easily through their intricate dances of camaraderie and intimacy. Perhaps she would tire of Moiraine’s company and seek out a more promising companion. That fear had dogged her steadily for three years already, and it seemed more crucial now. She needed Siuan desperately. Just the sight of her was enough to make Moiraine smile, and when she was absent it seemed the world lacked some essential quality, some color or spark. 

 

Siuan had spoken so wistfully of travelling the world, sailing the ocean and visiting far places and bonding a handsome prince as her warder. How cruel it would be to keep Siuan from her dreams, just so Moiraine could have her to herself! There would be pain in their parting, of course, but it would have to be borne, and she would bear it happily, for she knew it would be the right and selfless thing to have done. This closeness, all the little moments of giddy tenderness between them, were only a brief interlude in the cool solitude of her life. She had always held herself carefully apart from other people before she had known Siuan, and could again.

 

She knew many of the girls in the Tower thought her cold, and perhaps she was. There had been a time once when she thought that, in her grief over her mother’s death, something essential in her had been broken and could never be repaired. How she longed for the easy camaraderie of other women, their casual affections with each other, the fluency of which they spoke of matters of the flesh and of the heart! But this closeness always seemed ungraspable and distant to her, visible within reach yet always somewhat beyond her as though separated by an invisible door. 

 

Many of the girls she had taken novice classes with had come together in the manner of which she had only imagined, and yet she was always held apart from them. She was the kinswoman to the king, and in her blood carried the line of mad Carewin Damodred, and of Laman, whose shadow was growing not only in Cairhein but in the lands beyond. In theory, to enter the White Tower was to forgo any country or history, but she frequently noticed girls shifting away from her in the dining hall, or a crowd subtly parting to let her pass. And not all of the girls looked Cairheinan, either. 

 

And beyond that, had not had to take the requisite and oft-bemoaned classes in the Old Tongue, and was held up as an example to the other girls time and time again. They were not supposed to discuss their relative strength in the One Power, but her weaves always seemed to shine more brightly or work more quickly, or leap from her hands fully formed. She had only just been made Accepted, and already she and Siuan had begun to outstrip some of the girls who had worn the banded dress for years. 

 

Siuan was different—because she was clever and foul-mouthed and quicker to laugh, because she had come to the Tower knowing nothing at all and had learned only on her own merit. Deep down a part of her knew, or perhaps feared, that Siuan was much more powerful than she. How was it that she had had every advantage, and yet they still progressed at the same pace! And perhaps for that reason, she felt that her power was not wholly earned, and she knew others would think it too. So she must always be apart from them. 

 

And there was another matter, too. She knew there was a cruel streak in her. Long had the Damodred line carried sadism in their blood, and she felt it, even now. The first time she had ever channelled had been in anger—a branch suddenly severed from a passing apple tree opening a path of blood in a noblewoman’s face. The first time you channel, she thought, it will be something you want more than anything in the world, and that was what she had wanted. had thought: Please, Light, let something terrible happen to her. Let the ground open and swallow her up. 

 

And then she had heard the scream and saw the birds fountaining up in startled terror, and she saw that it had happened. The girl’s eye had gone completely red, but the iris was still a clear terrible blue, like the eyes of the stuffed wolverine she had seen on display in Tanchico. The cut stretched from just above her eyebrow to her cheekbone, and had it not been for the healing from the Aes Sedai in court, she would have had a scar there for the rest of her life. And Moiraine had caused it, because the woman had scorned her and she’d had no recourse. At least she’d served some small penance—afterwards she’d had a terrible fever that came on suddenly and left her shivery and aching. But each time her uncles frightened her, or made her want to cry, she would think to herself that she was not so different from them, not really, that she, too, hurt someone because she wanted to, and because she could. 

 

All her life she had grown up watching her family be cruel to each other, and it seemed in so many ways a natural state of being. Even in the Tower it was so. The girl who cries, the girl who stains her dress, the girl who cannot learn is punished. So the coldness—her coldness—seemed to her a necessary thing. Better, she thought, that people think her merely aloof. At least she was not ordering their hangings. 

 

Before Siuan she had never felt she was essential to another person. Her father had loved her, she knew, but he had other children, and at the death of her mother something deep had broken in him, as though a font had dried and no love of any other kind could seep through. Her sisters had been women grown by the time she was born, and Taringail, who had been nearly two decades old at her birth, had called mostly “kinswoman” and rarely “sister.” But Siuan had no blood ties to her and owed her no allegiance, and yet her friend seemed to have chosen her of her own free will. How strange it felt, and so hard to believe, but slowly she saw it to be true. It was the greatest, sweetest gift anyone had ever given to her, and she knew, in payment, that when the time came she must let Siuan go. 

 

But not yet. Now she still went to Siuan in bed, and Siuan shifted and pulled Moiraine against her in sleep and touched her hands arms and her back and her hair—light, friendly touches, but Moiraine burned for them, even if it shamed her, too. And sometimes, when she swung herself up into Arrow’s saddle, or forgot herself and spoke too long on some tract of mythology or history, she could feel Siuan’s eyes on her with a strange burning intensity that made her blush. Once or twice as they laughed together she had even thought, wildly, that Siuan was about to kiss her, but that was a foolish notion, and she put it from her mind. 

Notes:

you can find me on tumblr at @theyshouldputmoiraineinfortnite (idk if you can put links here)

not sure how evident it is in this chapter, but to anyone who was wondering/picking up vibes, Moiraine is 100% autistic #ToMe. Honestly I see her and Siuan as having an autism girlie/adhd girlie dynamic where Siuan is the one who socializes for both of them as a unit, but the way they think and see the world is similar enough that they just naturally get each other.

Chapter 2

Notes:

a little chapter to explore some of the religious systems/morality in the wheel of time universe but in a moiraine honouring way because I'm rotating her in the microwave of my mind 24/7

a lot of character development (i guess?), some hurt/comfort at the end, and some oblique references to corporal punishment in keeping with the practices in the books...anyways thanks for reading, love you :-)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

By the time winter came, it had become a form of exquisite torture to sleep with Siuan in bed. It was a hot summer that year, and it made sense for them both to keep their distance, but Autumn seemed to last scarcely a breath before the ground froze and the frosts came and sleeping two to a bed became a matter of practicality. Of all the trials she’d been set since she had come to the White Tower, somehow the most impossible was to lie beside Siuan in her gauzy nightdress, to feel the shape of Siuan’s body against her own in bed drowsy and supple with sleep-heat. On some nights when the fire was high, a faint seal of sweat would form between them like a kiss in places where their bare skin touched, and she swore to herself that she’d forgo bedding with Siuan altogether, and never mind the cold. But somehow she never could. 

 

Winter was a great time for festivals, and the Novices and Accepted were given a free day for the Feast of Lights. They were not supposed to go down to the city unchaperoned, but of course, many of the girls did, and the sisters, in large part, turned the other cheek, except in cases of an outrageous breach of conduct. A temporary market had been set up for the festival, and they walked together through the roads, which were thronged with people talking and laughing and occasionally denouncing each other over the price of silk or sweetmeats. Venders circulated throughout, selling every imaginable kind of food or beverage, and a large crowd had gathered around what was either a dog or cockerel fight and were placing bets. They gave that a wide berth; the sisters had eyes-and-ears everywhere, and any Novice or Accepted spotted within even a stone’s throw of such low entertainment would surely earn a visit to Merean’s study, or worse. 

 

They bought meat pies and elderflower wine from a stall and ate them, walking. In her old life, she might have liked to stop at the stalls and buy something–a ring or length of ribbon, perhaps, or a length of silk, for the vendors in Tar Valon were far superior to those in Cairhein in that regard, even if she could not take the fabric to seamstress until she was raised–but refrained, for she knew Siuan would not be buying anything. In some ways that was a relief. She had never felt quite right in the padding and stays of a fine Cairhienan lady, though at least clothes in Cairhien were far more concealing than those from other places. Her mother had not cared overmuch what she wore, but Moiraine’s aunts and nursemaids certainly had, to say nothing of the ladies of rival houses. She still preferred dark colours, but the plain white novice dresses had been a very welcome change. 

 

She did, however, buy Siuan a wide-toothed abalone comb she had seen her friend eyeing, but knew Siuan would never buy for herself. Siuan protested very convincingly throughout the entire transaction, but when Moiraine pressed it into her hands her friend did not demur for a moment.  

 

She noticed that all of the houses and buildings they passed seemed to have a different display—all with candles and lanterns, of course, but some houses had festoons of greenery and berries, while others had oranges stuffed with cloves or beautiful paper banners written in the Old Tongue. It had interested her to discover that every girl who came to the Tower seemed to have a different way of honouring the Light. Even within a single country, there seemed to be a great disagreement around customs and rituals, or even whether ancestor spirits were a boon that should be welcomed, or if they were vengeful and need be hurried away. Siuan, for example, had been raised to make offerings to her mother and uncles, while Cairhenans as a whole were very afraid of ghosts. 

 

Verin Sedai had told her that the winter festivals in all their variety were not new at all, but had ancient roots, dating back before the Age of Legends, and were based on the movements of the stars and the moon and the sun. Moiraine liked Verin, though she didn’t think she had the patience or temperament needed to join the Brown Ajah. Despite the Ajah’s reputation as scatterbrained, Moiraine thought Verin was refreshingly lucid, in that she went straight to the heart of the matter and removed extraneous detail.  Often, it took so much energy to decipher the meaning behind someone’s posture or expression that she lost track of the conversation entirely, or forgot what she had been meaning to say. But with Brown Sisters, she never had to worry about her conversant saying one thing and meaning another. She felt Verin was one of the only people with whom she could talk freely, without growing tired.

 

The other, of course, was Siuan. She felt she could talk to Siuan all day, and about anything at all—anything, that was, except the rush of desire and shame that rose in her at Siuan’s touch. But before that had started in her, they had shared everything. Siuan had a quick, sparkling wit and she loved to ask odd questions. 

 

Today, as they walked, Siuan said: “Do you think a tree could be evil?” They had invented a game in which one of them would come up with an outlandish question, and they had to debate it very seriously like White Ajah philosophers. 

 

Moiraine said: “If the Dark One can corrupt a tree, I suppose that must there’s something there to corrupt. But then there are places that are evil, like Aridhol , but because of the things the people there did. But then it wasn’t all of the people in Aridhol that were evil; it was King Balwen who would have given the order not to send aid to Manetheren in the Trolloc wars, not the people, but the whole city vanished anyways.”

 

“Aridhol?”

 

“Well, they call it Shadar Logoth now.”

 

“Oh,” said Siuan. “Right. Well, I suppose the question would be whether or not evil is a kind of essence or an innate thing, or if you can choose to be evil. Philosophically, at least,” she added hurriedly. “You could ask ‘is a Trolloc evil because it’s shadowspawn, or because it’s a reasoning being that does what the Fade tells it to anyways?’”

 

“But you can turn someone to the dark against their will,” said Moiraine, who was feeling fatalistic. Discussions of evil always grew uncomfortably personal—for her, at any rate. She wished Siuan had chosen another question. “So wouldn’t that imply it’s innate?”

 

And Siuan said: “But once someone is turned, haven’t people said it’s like something is missing in them? They’re no longer a free being. So if the presence of the Dark means the absence of free will…then that must imply that you can choose the side of Light. I mean, that it’s not innate.” She smiled at Moiraine. “I mean, your ancestors were cruel enough, but I think you turned out just fine.” 

 

How was it that Siuan knew exactly what she was thinking? Her friend had a gift, Moiraine thought. She smiled back. They looked at each other, and the look seemed to last a moment longer than normal, and then they looked away. 

 

“That doesn’t tell us anything about the tree,” she said, to cover the awkwardness. 

 

“Well,” said Siuan, “I suppose that would depend on if you define a tree as a thinking being or not.” 

 

They went on like that for a little while longer, and to their surprise, came upon another group of Accepted: Sheriam, Myrelle, Ellid, and Tarna, of all people. People had given her and Siuan little glances as they passed, but they were gaping in earnest, now. Moiraine was not certain if that was out of curiosity at such a large group of women from the White Tower, or because Ellid was amongst them. People usually stared at Ellid, and not just men, either. Moiraine had never envied her that, at least, or she hadn’t until Siuan had admitted that the blonde Accepted was very pretty. Then she found herself thinking it might not be so bad to be Ellid after all. 

 

“What are you two up to?” said Sheriam curiously. You two are always putting your heads together and whispering about something. At that, she and Myrelle locked eyes–a faint, quick glance, barely noticeable—and some secret glance seemed to pass between them. 

 

“Good and evil,” said Siuan flatly, in a voice that told Moiraine she had noticed it too. “What are you all talking about?”

 

“There’s supposed to be a troupe of gleemen,” said Myrelle, but we can’t find them. 

 

“That’s because we’ve been going in circles,” said Tarna dryly. 

 

“But we saw the most beautiful little glass animals,” said Ellid, neatly sidestepping the point of tension. “A woman from Tanchico has them in a little stall by the Osendrelle. She has stallions and eagles and all sorts of forest creatures.”

 

“And beside her,” said Myrelle, grinning, “there’s a stall that sells ‘instruments of pleasure.’”

 

Moiraine very pointedly did not look at Siuan at that moment, but, thankfully, the conversation moved on quickly enough. As usual, Siuan seemed to do the talking for both of them, leaving Moiraine free to look around her. You noticed more when you weren’t worrying about what to say next. Conversation, she learned, involved a certain degree of precognition, often requiring you to anticipate the flow of the discussion several exchanges in advance. If you could not, or you estimated wrong, someone could easily ask an unexpected question and you’d have only seconds to form the appropriate reply. 

 

After a time they parted ways with the other Accepted, and Moiraine felt glad of it. She liked all of the other girls—except Tarna, at any rate—but in small doses, and not all at once. She felt best when she was alone or anonymous in crowds, and she had always liked this time in the winter because people seemed to try to be good to each other. She liked to look at the candles in the windows and imagine that inside each window was a person wanting desperately to be loved and trying desperately to be good, and at night, alone, she could believe it.

 

“Is it true?” Siuan said suddenly, breaking their companionable silence. “What they say about the Feast of Lights in Cairhien? Do women really go around with no clothes on and kiss whoever they like?”

 

What had prompted that question? She blushed. “It’s true,” she said. “But I’ve never done…well, I’ve never done any of that.” In truth, it was not anyone from Cairhien she was thinking of, but the two novices she and Siuan had seen in the garden. How tenderly they held each other, and the little sounds! She had stared at them, red faced, knowing she ought to look away and yet she could not. How sheltered and clumsy she felt, too—that she should be raised to Accepted, yet her own knowledge of coupling was so pitifully spare. 

 

Blushing, she glanced at Siuan, and somehow it seemed she knew that Siuan was thinking of the same thing that she had and they looked at each other for a long moment. They had let themselves be directed by the flow of a crowd, and had come to the juncture of a small alley, and for a wild moment she was certain Siuan was going to press her up against the wall and kiss her and kiss her. She had never quite liked kissing before, but she thought she would not mind at all if Siuan had her then and there, with all the people passing by besides. But then they were past the alley, and the moment had passed, too.

 

“Do you miss Cairhien?” Siuan said, to break the silence.

 

“I don’t know,” she said, and realized it was true. When she thought of Cairhein it seemed to come to her in fragments that were made more poetic by their distance from logical time. Tav the ostler who called her “little Moiraine” who had shown her how to run her hand down a foreleg of a horse so it would raise its hoof to be shoed, and the first time she had seen a man hanged for stealing from a spice merchant, his tongue bloated and black in his mouth. Passing a group of boys playing at dice in an open courtyard and realizing with a start that one of them was not a boy at all, but a girl, with black hair tucked in her cap, and the moment their eyes met and she felt a little frisson move through her. Servants cleaning the rugs in the spring and hanging them out to dry like a clothesline full of paintings, and the bitter nursemaid who would slap her hands when she picked at her fingernails, and watching the sun come up over the towers of the city. But she was not certain if she had been happy there, nor really. 

 

“I suppose I miss it now—this time of year, I mean,” she went on. “Every year we’d have a big feast, and there would be musicians and tumblers, and Laman would come and not speak to anyone, and Barthanes would get drunk and start, well—“

 

She blushed. She had been about to say “start fondling the serving maids” but that was hardly the kind of matter you spoke of in public.

 

“But everyone wanted to pretend they were happy, and you didn’t believe it, but you wanted to, so you had to make yourself forget how people really were for a while so you could pretend that it was true. And because everyone was pretending and trying so hard it was almost like it really was true.”

 

She thought it didn’t sound like very much when you put it so plainly, but after her mother was gone it seemed like feast days had been the only happy days.

 

“It’s that they cared enough to pretend that made it so nice,” she said to Siuan, hoping Siuan might understand. Siuan’s family, though much worse off than hers, seemed to like each other well enough the way Siuan told it. It frightened her that they could be so similar and yet so different, too. Perhaps Siuan might someday decide they were too different, or the things she said were too strange. Siuan never seemed to say strange things, but Moiraine knew she said things that were wrong somehow, though she never quite understood why. She thought what she had just said was the wrong thing again, but it was how she felt. Could one person be so deeply distorted that everything natural to them came out wrong somehow? Perhaps everything Siuan said and did was good and everything she said and thought and did was evil, because she was cursed, like Laman and Aldecain and Morresin and Carewin and all the rest.

 

“All of the sisters in the Tower will be your family now,” Siuan said gently to her. Siuan had said earlier that she didn’t believe Moiraine was evil. But maybe Siuan did not know her well enough. She had never told Siuan the story of the girl in the apple grove, the first time she had touched the source. Perhaps she was not good enough to be Blue, and they would not have her, and she would have to become a Red, or a White and become insular and cold, or be a Green and always have to talk about men, and pretend she knew how to talk about men.

 

“That’s only if I pass for the shawl,” she said. 

 

“Of course you’ll pass,” said Siuan. She said it matter of factly, as though the subject were closed, and when she said it Moiraine believed it. How clever Siuan was, truly. 

 

Then Siuan did something very strange. She reached for Moiraine’s hand and squeezed it, comfortingly, Moiraine thought, but Siuan did not let go after. Moiraine did not want her to. So they walked like that for a while until their hands sweated even in the cold and then they let go. The whole thing had been strange and very wonderful, but it made her sad, too. 

 

In Cairhien, where public affection was frowned upon, lovers might wear a similar piece of clothing or jewellery as evidence of their courtship, but she had seen young men and women holding hands that way when she came to Tar Valon, and some of the girls in the Tower who were each other’s lovers walked together in the halls. She could not fathom why Siuan had wanted to take her hand that way. How people behaved often confused her—she found most people tended to behave in a way that was either disadvantageous or downright stupid—but Siuan was not stupid at all. But why would Siuan want to pretend to be lovers when they weren’t? Maybe if she understood people the way Siuan did she would know what these things meant, but, as Siuan said so many times, there was no use wishing for things that could not come true. 

 

***

 

She had thought the matter of kissing closed, but Myrelle had smuggled a flagon of ale into the Tower, and that night they passed it around and took little sips and congratulated the Altaran girl on her daring. Moiraine could hold her drink well—unexpectedly so, to most who looked at her—but Siuan went plush and giggly against her after a while, and that night she was hopeless with her buttons and Moiraine had to help her. 

 

“Moiraine,” she said, when they were both in bed, “did you mean what you said, about the Feast of Lights? That you really never kissed anyone except that boy you told me about?”

 

She nodded slowly, unsure of this line of questioning. Other girls came to the tower with plenty of experience—Verin Sedai had even been engaged!—but for her there had only been Cormanes, and she knew some of the girls would find it surprising that she had even done that much. And she certainly could not speak of those kisses with the flushed rapture of the other girls. They had almost seemed accidental. 

 

“But would you kiss someone else, if you had the chance? A commoner or—or someone you maybe weren’t supposed to?” 

 

“I don’t know,” she said, carefully. Talk of sexual matters would never cease to make her uncomfortable, and she would have to step carefully through the next exchanges to conceal her ignorance. “I never thought much of kissing,” she said. “I always thought it seemed so controlling. Like one person would always have power over the other.” 

 

Siuan looked at her and shrugged. “I think for some people, that’s what makes it so nice,” she said. She seemed a little deflated, though Moiraine couldn’t say why. Then she said: “Light, Moiraine! He didn’t hurt you, did he? That boy?” 

 

She hesitated. Siuan said: “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that. I shouldn’t have said anything.” 

 

But Moiraine shook her head. “No, he was good to me. It’s just—“ she had begun picking her way towards something too large and shameful to explain. 

 

“When I was younger,” she said finally,  “I used to listen in on people’s conversations with the Kesiera, and I heard one of my nursemaids talking about me. She said that she thought that my mother dying so young had broken something in me, and that I was growing up twisted, and that I might never be right after.” Even as she spoke the words now, she felt herself flushing with a prickle of cold shame. The woman had said more, too, though she could never repeat those words to anyone. It’s a good thing the Tower is taking that poor girl, for she’ll never be happy with any man. There’s a coldness to her that’s not natural, not natural at all. 

 

Laman would have your tongue for that , hissed the woman’s companion, and it was true. If Moiraine had even let a word slip of what the woman had said to her uncle she could have had the woman’s tongue and more, but that meant she would have to repeat those terrible words, and, more, tell everyone how she knew. 

 

“That’s ridiculous,” said Siuan immediately. Siuan was unfailingly loyal, at least where she was concerned. “Light, Moiraine, tell me you didn’t believe her.” 

 

But she could not answer. 

 

“You helped me with my letters,” Siuan said. “In our first year, remember? And you just about taught me the Old Tongue. I would never have learned so fast if you hadn’t been up with me every night, until I got all the vowels right. And don’t say ‘anyone would have done that’ because you know that’s not true. You helped me when you didn’t have to, and you never asked for anything in return.”

 

It seemed so much plainer when Siuan said it. That was Siuan’s gift—she always made Moiraine see things much more clearly. But while it was true that she had helped Siuan learn the Old Tongue, she had not done so out of personal abnegation, but to see the look of sudden joy cross Siuan’s face when she understood something new. Siuan was a quick study, learning in days what had sometimes taken Moiraine a week or more, and her excitement was contagious. They had stayed up for hours in the warm ember of night, talking and laughing and leaning very close together so they could look at the same page, and it seemed to Moiraine the first hint of a secret world, one which existed only for them. 

 

“If it makes you feel any better,” Siuan said gently, “there was a woman in our village who claimed that I was shadowspawn incarnate, and the shock of my coming claimed my poor benighted mother’s soul.”

 

“No!” Moiraine was horrified. 

 

“Well,” said Siuan, “she also claimed that I’d been selling myself on the docks of the Maule by my fifteenth name day. I’m not sure if she’d consider my being here to be a downgrade or an improvement.” 

 

She spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of pain there. Channelling was anathema in Tear, and so any Tairen girl who came to the White Tower would live in a state of permanent exile. She knew Siuan held that pain privately and secretly, even as Tairens in the tower had their own communities, which were closer than most diasporas from other countries, except perhaps the Atha'an Miere. 

 

This time she took Siuan’s hand, as Siuan had taken hers earlier in the city, and gently covered it with her own. Siuan went still for a moment, then gave her a lopsided smile. Siuan had comforted her so much today, and Moiraine was glad she could return the favour in a small way. 

 

They settled down to sleep against each other, and this time Siuan was the one who lay behind her and held her. She was usually the one who held Siuan when they slept—she felt it was easier to control her emotions that way than it was when Siuan’s breasts were pressed against her back and Siuan’s pelvis pressed against her hips. But it was nice to be held, too. Siuan was stroking the hair at her temples with the pad of her thumb, and she pressed the soles of her feet together and felt her body humming with warmth and tender care. She always felt very much the lecher when she let Siuan touch her this way, or hold her this close, but it was so wonderful to be held, and she could not give it up. She pulled Siuan’s arm around herself, savouring that one indulgent motion, and clasped Siuan’s hand in hers, and Siuan made a happy, sleepy sound and nestled closer against her. 

 

Eventually, she felt Siuan’s breathing slow, and figured her friend was sleeping, but then she heard Siuan say: “Moiraine?” 

 

“Mmm?” She had been drifting against the banks of sleep for quite some time herself, and it took an effort to speak. The best she could manage was a half-mumble. 

 

Siuan said: “I hope—“ and here she paused for so long that Moiraine thought she really had fallen asleep. Then she spoke again, her voice soft in the darkness. “I hope kissing can feel good for you, too.”  

 

Notes:

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Chapter 3

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

They had begun learning the hundred weaves they would need to test for the shawl. The first half of them had been easy enough, she found, and the next forty or so had been difficult, but not impossible, but the final ten were agonizingly complex, and as hard as she worked, she could not manage the hundredth. 

 

“You are still trying to control the weave with your mind like a needle in a tapestry,” said Larelle Tarsi, a sharp voiced Domani Grey sister. “That might have worked fine for a Novice, but it won’t be enough anymore. This one almost has to leap into being fully formed. By the time the first thread is half finished you must be already preparing the next one, and so on, the way a skilled archer aims not at where his prey is now, but where he knows it will go. Again.”

 

Larelle was an exacting tutor, though never unnecessarily taxing or cruel, and Moiraine felt heat come to her face. Doggedly she tried again, but this time it was even worse, for she felt the eyes of the others in the class on her so acutely now, and she barely managed a few tendrils of air before the weave collapsed entirely. 

 

“You’re just moving your hands,” said Larelle. “Your core is completely immobile. Remember, the weave doesn’t come from your hands—it comes from everywhere. The gestures are just a placeholder like words are a placeholder for things in the world.”

 

To her relief, the scrutiny turned to Zemaille, on her right. Zemaille had some trouble on her first try, but the second time she produced the requisite shower of colourful sparks without a moment’s hesitation. It was only the thought that Zemaille was fifteen years her senior and had been Accepted for five years already that stopped Moiraine from crumpling with humiliation. 

 

Siuan caught her eye from across the room and made a little moue of sympathy. Siuan was struggling, too, but she had gotten far closer than Moiraine ever had to completing the weave. Often it collapsed with merely a single thread of fire or spirit left, and Moiraine was certain Siuan would master it with some practice. 

 

She kept her eyes lowered as they left the room and filed into the corridor, hoping to avoid notice. Other girls seemed to shake off failures with good humour, breaking immediately into laughter and animated conversations as soon as the class was over, but to Moiraine, every failure seemed to lodge more deeply in her, until a task that had once seemed simple enough became insurmountable. With other lessons that habit had worked in her favour, but channelling the One Power required surrender more than hard-knuckled control. 

 

To her horror, though, Larelle touched her shoulder and held her back as she made to leave. Moiraine tried frantically to catch Siuan’s eye, but the woman ushered her friend onwards with a firm “On you go, child,” and Siuan had no choice. 

 

“You’re from Cairhien, aren’t you, child,” the Aes Sedai said when they were alone. It was phrased as a question, but it wasn’t, really. Moiraine nodded warily, unsure of what route this line of scrutiny might take. Larelle had the unpleasant habit of asking the question you least wanted to hear. 

 

“Yes, I could tell,” she said. “Cairhienan girls often have blocks of some sort at the beginning of their training. Cairhien values Aes Sedai very highly, but some of its…cultural values, shall we say, put you at a unique disadvantage at this stage in your training. Especially when a young woman manifests the spark. Many Cairhienen tend to struggle with the idea that aspects of one’s nature might be uncontrollable.”

 

The woman’s voice was bracing and firm, if not overtly kind, but Moiraine felt herself flushing deep red. That this woman thought she needed consoling! Surely the Aes Sedai would not have said as much to Siuan. Siuan was Tairen, and channelling had been illegal for her, but Moiraine never heard Siuan making excuses. She felt warm all over with shame. 

 

“Keep practicing,” Larelle went on. “You’re still very young. Not all of these other girls got it right away. Many of them have been working on these weaves for years. Eventually you’ll get so bored of the weave that you’ll find yourself weaving it without knowing. That’s often how it goes.” 

 

Moiraine nodded, holding the rest of herself perfectly still. Now would be the worst time of all to let her composure slip. She had a terrible feeling the Aes Sedai would expect some response from her, and she was not sure she could speak at all. But the woman only said “Go on, now, child,” and Moiraine exhaled with relief at the dismissal. 

 

She had been right about Siuan learning the final weave, she discovered, for Siuan managed to conjure the requisite shower of silver sparks scarcely a day later. Moiraine was happy for her, but, watching from the bed in Siuan’s Tower room, she felt a twinge of panic, too. Perhaps the thing she had dreaded most of all had come to pass, and Siuan would finally begin to outpace her. She had tried time and time again to make the hundredth weave, hoping to trick her mind into becoming bored, as Larelle had told her, but the moment she sensed herself growing absent her senses would sharpen with anticipation, and the moment would be lost. 

 

It was, she thought, very nearly like trying to make yourself fall asleep. The harder you wanted it, the less likely it seemed to happen. Siuan attempted to coax her with a series of nautical and aquatic metaphors, but they made very little difference, until one day, she said: “Anansi of Ryddingwood.”

 

She looked up, startled. “Come again?”

 

“You said you know most of his stories by heart. Tell me one.”

 

It was true that she knew many tracts by heart, but Ryddingwood was one of her favourites. She chose an old historical account of a border skirmish in Arafell, written in an early style of High Chant that she loved because the phrases were foreign and strange. As she spoke, she was conscious only of Siuan’s eyes on her. Her face at first was encouraging, but as Moiraine looked at her Siuan took on that bright-eyed, breathless look she sometimes got when Moiraine spoke for too long on the matter of some history or another, or when she had taught Siuan to dance. 

 

She knew, objectively, that people found her pretty. She had a pale oval face whose softly delicate features seemed to suggest a gentle openness of spirit, a quality she could not locate anywhere in the interior of her nature. It came as a perpetual surprise to her that her face should have been made that way when the rest of her was hard and cruel. But she knew, too, that there was a rot at the core of her that made good people afraid of her and made cruel people find her and want to hurt her or count her amongst them. 

 

It was almost as though she exuded some sound or odour, as animals did, that was invisible to most people but clear as day to others. People like Elaida a’Roihan, for one, the Aes Sedai who had pushed her so relentlessly as a Novice, or her uncle Aldecain, who she had seen strike a man in the face with a gauntleted fist so that his teeth spilt over the floor like red and white buttons, but kissed both her cheeks on the day she left for the White Tower and said he was sure she would do them all proud. Sometimes it seemed that the air of abjection and decay that hung about her was so strong she was surprised anyone could draw near her without flinching. 

 

But when Siuan looked at her that way, Moiraine almost believed that she could be gentle and open and wistful and kind, all of those things she could only believe might be true when she saw herself in a picture or reflection—saw a version of her that was not attached to her and her wrongness. Siuan’s gaze made her feel clean and warm, and if she let herself remain in the path of it it was as though all shame began to melt away. Even her flushing cheeks and pounding heart seemed to fall aside, for she knew that as long as Siuan gazed at her she would be still and safe. 

 

She had begun to craft the last weave almost without noticing, her hands moving fluidly, without pause or trepidation. Often she felt as though she stood a few steps outside of her body, but this was different—she felt something was moving with her, moving through her without consuming her, but rather in the fragile dance of sheep and their herder, or the way insects and flying creatures seemed to pass inches from each other but never collide. She scarcely even noticed the shower of sparks raining down around her or registered what she had done until Siuan jumped up and took her in her arms, and then they were overbalancing and falling over onto the bed. 

 

Awareness returned to her then in a great sudden rush. She and Siuan were lying on the bed, their legs tangled, her on top and Siuan beneath her. Just as suddenly, she realized—with a start of something that was not quite terror, but sharp and bright all the same–that they had fallen so that she lay with one of Siuan’s legs between her own, and her own hip dangerously close to the apex of Siuan’s thighs. 

 

When Cormanes had kissed her she had sometimes felt a faint heartbeat starting up between her legs, as though someone was touching her there beneath several layers of fabric. That in itself was not so strange. It had always seemed to her as though the world moved behind a series of curtains or veils, through which she could see but never reach. Sensations often seemed muffled to her, and emotions—except anger, perhaps—reached her with nearly all their brightness rubbed away. Why would this one be any different? 

 

But now, with Siuan beneath her, the feeling came so fast and urgent in her like a startled animal bolting from the undergrowth and she was frozen for a moment in the grip of it. And Siuan against her was so warm and soft, smelling of her mellow wonderful scent that Moiraine had come to associate with sleep and closeness, her body rising and falling with breath. Moiraine could not look at her, because she knew if she did she would not be able to look away, and she cheated and looked anyway and got stuck. Siuan’s eyes were gleaming, her lips open as though waiting to be kissed. And the whole time that wild heartbeat pounding away between her legs, so sharp and insistent it might be a clarion call. 

 

She remembered suddenly the day the Tower kitchens had made whitefish in the Tairen style, steamed whole and served in a light salty broth with spring onions. The most tender part, Siuan said, is behind the cheek, here. And with one finger she had reached up and touched Moiraine on the cheek, in a place halfway between her jaw and her cheekbone, in front of the whole dining hall where everyone could see. Then she had taken her spoon and scooped from a secret place behind the gills a small piece of flesh only just larger than a thumbnail. 

 

“Whenever my aunts and uncles and their families came over for feast days,” she had said, “we all used to fight over who got it. But here no one even knows to look for it.”

 

Unfamiliar food made her nervous as a rule; the first few weeks at the Tower, eating only the food that was given her, no matter what it might have been, had been near torment for her. She had not realized that most people did not have servants who would rush to remove a dish at the faintest expression of displeasure, or kitchen boys trained to test for poison and that the sort of remarks that were common in the Sun Palace–where poisonings, though not quite quotidian, happened frequently enough to make anyone wince at an unusual taste–would only earn derisive snickers and a reputation for high-mindedness from the other girls. 

 

But the little piece of fish had clearly meant something to Siuan, so she ate it, despite her misgivings. It was very tender, without scales or bones, and did not flake like fish flesh normally did, and for something plucked from within the depths of a wizened fishhead, was not unpleasant at all.

 

“You’re right,” she said. “It is tender.”

 

“Have the other one,” Siuan had said, using her fork and knife to manoeuvre the fish head to the other side, and before she could protest Siuan had placed the other small button of flesh on her plate. So she had eaten that one too, and Siuan had beamed at her. 

 

If it had been Cairhen and someone had done what Siuan had just done for her, it would not have been about the fish at all, but something else entirely. But Siuan did not care overmuch for insinuation. She had as good as said she thought Daes Dae’mar was ridiculous. So Moiraine had not taken anything Siuan had done that evening as anything more than a gesture of fondness. But now, with Siuan on her back gazing up at her through the fringe of her eyelashes, Moiraine was not certain. Perhaps she had meant what Moiraine had thought, and when she dutifully clambered off Siuan and to her feet, she felt an odd twinge of regret, as though some wonderous path had become closed to her. 



***

She thought if she was anyone else, Alanna or Myrelle or even Siuan, she might have known what to do. The thought of leaning forward and kissing Siuan on the bed seemed more and more absurd the more she thought of it, especially when she imagined it was her doing the kissing. She knew so very little of love and its tributaries and had no way of recognizing the little asides that others seemed to know instantly as flirtation. 

 

Her courtship—if it could be called that—with the boy Cormanes had been staid and formal. He was from a minor but rising house that had gained favour with House Damodred for their prescience in horseflesh, and the only part of their time together not strictly ordained by practice and custom had been the mismatch between their stations. His grandparents in the time of Carewin Damodred had been the first to breed fine Tairen horses with Sheinaran chargers—a strange mix, at first, but the borderland crosses had made excellent hunting mounts, fearless and sturdy, with all of the fleetness of Tairen racing breeds and none of the propensity towards broken forelegs. 

 

All of Moiraine’s uncles hunted on horses from that original bloodline, and the high seat of his house, a young woman barely ten years older than Moiraine herself, was known to be efficient and brutal. Cormanes himself was very handsome in a gentle, delicate way, with thickly curling hair and long eyelashes like a girl’s, and it was only natural that he might make a play for the hand of Laman’s unwed niece. 

 

The match would never do, politically, but to her surprise, she had been charmed by him. He had a certain self-effacing manner that was rare among Cairhienan, and seemed to play the game of houses with a certain chagrin, as though a part of him was always shrugging and saying isn’t all of this so ridiculous ? So she had let him walk with her in the finely groomed gardens and geometric hedgerows. She had a number of appropriate topics prepared for conversation and when they exhausted those they would talk about horses. Sometimes they would ride together, in the hills outside the city. He was a good rider, as comfortable on horses as she, and she liked that he did not mind that she rode in men’s clothes and not the appropriate divided skirts and that when they raced he never let her win on purpose. 

 

She had learned to guide conversations by deflecting all questions from herself and turning them upon the asker, but he pressed her again and again, with what was either genuine curiosity or prodigious skill for manipulation. She waffled a little but decided there was no harm in speaking openly to him. Soon she would be going away and none of the intrigues of this place could touch her. But it was not only now that she had felt distant. Often it felt as though she moved through the world and found it shrouded in a series of veils. Each time she raised her hand to part one and see the person who stood behind it, a wind would come through and twist it from her grasp. Sometimes it seemed to her that there were two worlds; the worlds of others, and her own world, which was separate from the others as if hidden by the nictating second eyelid of a bird of prey. She did not often have cause to speak about herself.

 

He wanted to know what channelling felt like. It seemed to be a topic of great interest to him. She said it felt very cold and very alive, like riding in winter and feeling the cold air sting your face, or stepping into freezing water, or the feeling that sometimes came to her when she was awake at night and reading something very beautiful. At those times, when the world slept, it seemed she could imagine some great elemental beauty that stretched amongst all people and knew that it was a lie, that when they woke all of the charitable possibilities of the human spirit would melt away with little acts of greed and cruelty, but that she must believe the lie, because otherwise how could you go on? "Except," she said, "when I channel, it's real. I mean, I don't just believe that there is some great force that links us all, I know it's true."

 

"It's odd," he had said. "I have heard it described as an experience of being very close to the spirit of creation, so I always imagined it must feel...different. Earthier, I suppose."

 

She had blushed then. Was he, in some oblique way, asking after her sexual history? She realized belatedly, that she had put herself in a vulnerable position, revealing far more of herself than he had of himself, and now he was guiding the conversation.

 

"I don't know," she said. "I've no way of knowing how anyone else feels. Maybe it's a little bit different for everyone."

 

He had looked at her for a very long time, and finally nodded, and said: "I think out of all people, Cairhenan live the furthest from the earth." 

 

She had stared back at him then, faintly discomfited, but curious too, and thought of the geometric high towers, the unswerving neat rivers, the dams and waterways, the hills and valleys made level by great gouges cut from the soil. She realized then that his remark had not been innuendo at all, but an odd kind of sedition, though against what she could not say. She had never before met a Cairhienan who spoke out directly against Daes Dae'mar, and she found it exhilarating and strange.

 

“Talk in the palace is that you’re going to be very powerful,” he said one day. “They say you have immense potential, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades”

 

“If that were true,” she’d told him, “you know I could never marry. The White Tower forbids marriage from any of its acolytes.” This was not exactly true. Greens married their Warders frequently, though it hadn’t been very clear if sisters from any other Ajah might marry as well. But she had no intention of doing so, and wanted to discourage any plots of matrimony with finality. 

 

He nodded, seeming to accept this. 

 

“And even if it were not true,” she went on, “Damodred would need to consolidate its power. Anvere is too old for marriage, and Innloine and Taringail are wed already. Caraline is of marriageable age, but she’s low in the order of succession.”

 

He only nodded. “You would want to join with Riatin, of course,” and she saw that he understood her meaning—that she had no reason to give him any of her time at all, and did so only out of personal fondness.

 

A wind had come through the stand of birch where they rested and lifted the hem of her cloak. It was early autumn, her favourite time, still close enough to summer that the sun had not lost its syrupy brilliance, yet the air with its leafmulch smell had a certain sepulchral chill. He asked if he might kiss her, and she said he might. The setting sun rested in the corner of his lip, and it seemed almost that he might open his mouth and swallow it like the yolk of a great shining egg. He kissed her, tipping her head back, and she thought: he’s giving me the sun. She imagined it passing between their bodies, between their mouths. 

 

She had never kissed anyone before, though she and Caraline had spoken of how it felt, and she felt no great grasping pleasure at what they had done, but he was so lovely to look at, so graceful and gentle, and it seemed an understanding had been formed between them, and a certain mutual tenderness. She felt they had fallen into a deep companionship similar to that of her parents after many years of marriage. If she had to be married to someone, she thought she would have liked for it to be him. 

 

But what she felt for Siuan made that pleasant future seem a mere shadow. With Siuan the feeling had come so fast and strong it had almost frightened her with its intensity. It was as though she were riding bareback on an unbroken charger, and it was all she could do just to hang on. Lately, Siuan had become more tactile, holding Moiraine against her as she slept, or kissing her forehead or even her cheek in the dark. Sometimes Moiraine thought Siuan was trying purposefully to make her laugh because she smiled so brightly whenever Moiraine did. And the more she laughed, the more Siuan would smile. What a strange alchemy indeed, she thought. 

 

And then one day they were in the library together. This was one of her favourite times, when each of them sat absorbed in the context of their own universe. She had always loved histories, genealogies, folklore and local customs. She felt they spelled out the secret things she wished she could know now, the secret nebulous little rules that everyone seemed to know instinctively without having to be told but which only later would be recorded as fact. She wanted to share all of this with Siuan, and wanted to know what Siuan thought about, too, wanted Siuan to speak to her at length, on history, on anything, all of her cool bright passions and little tender hurts and sorrows and sweet joys. Sometimes Siuan spoke to her a little about what she was reading or ventured a certain opinion about some past or present happening in the world, but it never seemed to be enough to quell that strange breathless hunger. 

 

Even now Siuan was reading, lost in that quiet inner world. Siuan was still a ponderous reader–though she’d learned extraordinarily quickly, she had been all but illiterate when she’d come to the Tower–but she seemed to take in great swathes of information at a time. She wrote very quickly too. She spoke, if not carefully or decorously, then with a certain exactitude, and seemed always to know what to say, but her brain moved very quickly. Moiraine had never seen someone learn as fast as Siuan had. She seemed to take in huge swathes of information at once, and her writing was often disjointed at first. She would start with one idea and then think of another halfway through her sentence, and start another sentence before the first one was finished. The result was an odd shorthand that only Siuan could understand, and she would copy out what she had written a second time, this time with all of the pertinent details. 

 

Moiraine tried to focus on her own work, but she eventually gave up and watched Siuan write instead. It was fascinating to see how Siuan’s mind worked. But perhaps she had been staring for too long because Siuan’s leg nudged hers under the table. It was a friendly movement, and playful, without pain. At first, Moiraine had been confused by this tactile language but learned that Siuan only wanted her to imitate what she had done. It was a way of showing lighthearted affection, like the language used by horses or kittens when they played. Lots of girls seemed to nudge and swat at each other in this way. 

 

So she nudged Siuan back, and they jostled each other back and forth in the playful vernacular they had developed together until Siuan misjudged the force of her shoulder, and she almost toppled off the chair, and they both laughed, leaning in so close their foreheads nearly touched and shaking with suppressed mirth. Siuan did not behave this way around anyone else, and it pleased Moiraine to realize how naturally Siuan seemed to gravitate towards her body, seemed to seek her out and want to touch her.

 

She had never experienced the ease she felt with Siuan around any other person. Perhaps that was the difference between Siuan and other women, and why her feelings towards Siuan had gone on so long while her feelings for others faded. As strange as it was to think about, Siuan had never given her cause to be discouraged or to make herself cold. With most of her relationships there came a moment of horizon where she sensed the polite courtesies that had bound them together had reached their limit, and the rapport would either need to evolve into personal connection or die out. Most of them—all of them, in fact, that were not bound either by blood or practical or political necessity—had fizzled out. But when she was with Siuan she found herself buoyed by the full force of her friend’s attention, cradled by it, felt it surrounding her and making her safe. 

 

Siuan had that gift of making anyone around her feel special. It was why she was a great leader, and why people seemed to gravitate towards her wherever she was. For Moiraine, who received the full force of Siuan’s attention, it was nearly unbearable. She felt like her body was swelling, expanding, growing more tender and sensitive. Being with Siuan was like being in a secret world, one that existed only for them, or between them, and, though it was invisible, offered a type of safety beyond any she had ever known. 

 

And then, suddenly, she remembered two things in quick succession. The first was that she had dreamed about being with Siuan in a library once—not an explicit dream, but erotic enough in the language of dreams that she felt her face heating now to think of it. The other was that her and Siuan’s faces were very close together. That made her blush even harder, and she bit her lip. 

 

The movement drew Siuan’s eyes instantly to her mouth. Moiraine held her breath. Siuan did not seem to be breathing either. She found herself once more being caught in the warm honey of Siuan’s gaze, growing once more in thrall to the strange power it had to make everything else fall away, even the sense of her own body and the sound of her heart. She could not look away, but she did not want to, either. 

 

When Cormanes had kissed her it had been formal and grandiose, even if it had been gentle. This was nothing like that, but in a moment of perfect clarity she was certain Siuan wanted to kiss her, too. The thought both thrilled and terrified her. She was still scared of kissing, but if Siuan kissed her, it would mean that Siuan wanted her, and that truth would be so wonderful it would be worth anything. 

 

She was so starved for romantic affection that even this small moment of closeness sent a faint current of arousal through her. Their eyes met. They were barely inches away. Siuan tilted her head slightly so that their noses brushed. Moiraine did the same. Their bodies seemed to move and sway together even with that small motion. It was almost like kissing. Someone had told her once that this was how cats kiss, with their noses. The thought filled her with a light warm feeling. 

 

Then their eyes met again. She remembered the night a week before when she had woken and turned over in bed, expecting to see Siuan asleep beside her, and instead found that Siuan was awake, too, and watching her. Her gaze now was just the same, intense and tender. She brought one of her hands up to Moiraine’s shoulder, an overture, and then to the base of her neck. Then she opened her mouth to speak and suddenly Moiraine knew—not exactly what Siuan would say, but the meaning. Siuan wanted to kiss her, but she knew Moiraine was afraid, and she did not know how to articulate that mix of nervousness and desire. 

 

“Yes,” she breathed, answering the question before Siuan could ask, unable to wait any longer. But Siuan had gone suddenly still, and her hand went to Moiraine’s knee in urgency. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. 

 

They were in a small, secluded part of the library, which they chose because people rarely passed by. Moiraine had discovered it while helping Verin reshelve books. But she and Siuan broke apart anyway and hastily rearranged themselves to appear deep in thought. She stared at the page in front of her, unable to read a single word, unable even to remember what the book was on. Her heart was pounding, and the place between her legs was throbbing, too, a slower, insistent pulse, and she knew she was wet there, somehow, though what they had done had not been erotic at all. 

 

A moment later a figure rounded the corner. It was Merean. The Mistress of Novices, like all Aes Sedai, seemed to glide, rather than walk, and she favoured them with an odd, searching stare. It was the look many people seemed to give them, now, as though they had been doing something wrong. Others seemed to smile wistfully or knowingly at them when they passed. Moiraine could not understand it. They had not been doing anything strictly wrong, but she still felt embarrassed, as though she had been caught out. 

 

She was very glad when Merean had left. But the wonderful golden web that seemed to have formed between Siuan and her, that shining moment of possibility, had collapsed like a partially made weave. She really did believe that, in that moment, and perhaps only in that moment, Siuan had wanted to kiss her. But she did not know how to bring the feeling back—not yet. 



Notes:

*slaps fic* this bad boy can fit so much Moiraine meta in it

If you've made it this far thank you for reading :0) the chapter breaks are more based on how much I have the capacity to write at a time, but they WILL be getting together next chapter I prommy

Chapter 4

Notes:

yes this is more than a month after the last chapter yes it's almost 7.5k words and some of the dialogue might be missing quotation marks (if so I'm sorry) AND yes they finally do get together in this one :-)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text



She dreamt that Siuan had given her a bundle of flowers. They were wrapped in white cloth and tied with a blue ribbon, and in the dream she knew instantly that they were the flowers that lovers gave each other, and she said so.

 

Yes , said Siuan in the dream. I want you to have them. 

 

And she said: so does that mean

 

Yes , said Siuan again. She smiled. Then she left, saying she had a Novice lesson, and afterwards Moiraine spent the rest of the dream looking for her and never quite finding her. Always Siuan seemed to be somewhere in front of her, and Moiraine caught a glimpse of her hair or the sound of her laugh, but they always seemed to miss each other. In the dream that did not matter so much. The knowledge of Siuan’s love for her was in her like silver, pressing against every inner part of her being, and she knew they would find each other again, and do with each other all of the sweet things that lovers did. What was an hour or two apart? 

 

When she woke she was full of joy, because she knew Siuan loved her. Then she realized seconds later that it had been a dream, and she did not really know that it was true. 

 

Siuan was up already, dressing in quick, efficient motions with her back to Moiraine. They slept in each other’s rooms nearly every night, with half of her clothes in Siuan’s room and half of Siuan’s clothes in hers. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which room had belonged to which person originally. Siuan was nearly dressed, but had not yet done up the buttons of her bodice, and there was a swathe of exposed skin there not quite covered by her shift, fawn coloured in the milky light just after dawn. Two lines of black geometric triangles marched over her shoulders and down her back, meeting somewhere along the length of her spine. Every time Moiraine saw them she wondered just how far down Siuan’s body they went. A part of her still felt raw and vulnerable from the sensations of the dream, and she imagined what it would be like to stand beside Siuan and run her hand down the curve of Siuan’s back and inside the open bodice of her dress.  

 

It was a bold thought, of the kind she had never before allowed herself in daytime, but somehow it did not feel quite so wrong as it had before. She realized a part of her had begun to wonder if Siuan might like to be touched that way, even by her. Then Siuan straightened up and saw her looking and smiled. Moiraine smiled back instantly, her cheeks coloring, too startled and ashamed to do anything else. She thought Siuan might be angry or embarrassed, but if anything, her friend seemed almost pleased. For a moment Moiraine thought she was about to speak, but she seemed to think the better of it and they dressed together in a silence that was not unpleasant, but heavy with something she could not say. 

 

They were not yet lovers, and yet, after that strange moment in the library, she felt they were not quite friends, either, but something between. It was like the difference between a girl who could not channel at all, and a girl who could be taught. She did not know for certain that anything could happen, but it might. The knowledge seemed to spread through her like delicate frost, making all of her feel alert and special. 

 

At breakfast they sat so close while eating that their calves and ankles touched, and she was conscious the entire meal of the heat of Siuan’s body against her own. Before she would have moved away at the first sign of closeness, but this time she relaxed into it, allowing herself to take pleasure from it, and when they walked together she allowed herself to interlace her arm with Siuan’s at the elbow, something she had always wanted to do but had never done. Siuan looked surprised, but she did not flinch or strike her or pull away. It was not how lovers walked, but how she had seen women walk together at market, friends or sisters. 

 

At midday Siuan put her arm around Moiraine’s waist while they ate. The knowledge of it, the feeling of being encircled, was the most wonderful thing Moiraine had ever felt. She found herself thinking of other ways they might touch each other, dreaming of the tender little ways Siuan might touch her—not in public, of course, never in public—when they were lovers, how she might run her hands through Moiraine’s hair or rub the back of her neck. Some girls who were established pillow friends—the term those in the White Tower used for lovers, which she had discovered embarrassingly late in her time as a Novice—seemed to touch each other that way, and she was both shocked and fascinated by it, and ached for such casual intimacy. 

 

She had always felt very strange whenever she saw two girls together, embarrassed and hopeful and sad. It made things so awkward, having been elevated above girls who were older than she was, and she felt certain her frustrated innocence in matters of desire was plainly evident to those around her, and that girls who envied or resented her spoke openly of that behind her back. She understood that carnal knowledge was a form of currency here, where routines were strict and worldly possessions banned and no one had more than anyone else. Exchanging memories of boys or past or current liaisons with other girls was part of how people became friends with each other, though she could not say precisely why. Sometimes when she imagined herself and Siuan as lovers, she thought of the thrill of being able to finally talk and laugh with the other girls and felt terribly guilty. How like a Cairhienan, she thought, to find advantage in something so earnest and sweet. 

 

She had always feared that, deep down, a part of her had been drawn to Siuan out of social necessity. It was true that Siuan was intelligent and had the makings of a great leader; Moiraine had known that nearly from the moment they had met. It was also true that Siuan had helped her as a Novice, coaching her when she had not understood the best method to scour a pot or scrub a floor, and that their relationship had grown out of a certain mutual reciprocity, for in return she had helped Siuan learn to read. But there had been something more there, too, a quiet urgency. She felt she had needed Siuan to like her, and had been pulled to her in a way she could not explain, and that being with her felt very natural. It was as though Siuan had come up beside her and they had fallen into step with each other without a word, their bodies naturally falling into rhythm. 

 

There was no real stigma in Cairhein against women who took other women as lovers, but women could not marry under the Light. Most marriages were arranged by the families of the bride and groom, or sometimes even the High Seat of their houses, and the chief concern in those union were matters of land and alliances. The union would also need to produce viable heirs, which meant that any two people who could not reproduce could be married in a way recognized by the King or Queen and the State. Sex, as a rule, was not a matter of public concern, and affairs were by nature kept out of the public eye, so she had never seen women together in a respectable union. 

 

As much as she has dreaded marriage and found the idea of bearing children intolerable, she had always found extramarital affairs to be equally impractical. So much messiness, and so many opportunities to make oneself vulnerable to blackmail. It was true that women had interested her, but they were quick, passing infatuations that faded with time. She had never really recognized them for what they were until she came to the Tower, where such things were far more commonplace. And even then she had never quite understood the point of a relationship between Novices, because anything that grew between them would need to be broken off as soon as one of them was raised. But then she had also thought her feelings towards Siuan would fade, in time. In fact they had only grown stronger. What she felt for Siuan, those bouts of mercurial desire coupled with an enduring tenderness, was stronger than anything she had ever felt for any other person, and a small foolish part of her had started to believe that Siuan felt the same for her, too. 

 

***

 

She had decided to wait for a sign. If Siuan touched her again the way she had in the library, or did some other strange, tender thing, then Moiraine would tell her. What she would say or do she was not yet certain. Anything plausible seemed ridiculous almost as soon as she thought of it. In Cairhein you might invite someone to a ball with you, or to take some air or visit your estate and walk in the gardens, or else give them a token of your affection. This was a very formal act, with a great many rules dictating the size and price of the gift. It must be lavish enough not to cause offense, yet not be suggestive either, and above all not ostentatious. But she and Siuan already went everywhere together, and she had given Siuan so many gifts already. In truth, her status was high enough that she had never needed to actively court another person. Prospective matches had always given suit to her, and any such offer was evaluated carefully with an eye for the suitor’s deeds and holdings by a number of interested parties. 

 

The best course of action, she thought, would likely be to kiss Siuan then and there when the moment came. A kiss was undeniable and its meaning was clear. She was not in the habit of kissing people—in all her life she had kissed only one person, the boy Cormanes, and she was not quite certain if she had liked it. But there had been so many moments where she had been certain Siuan was going to kiss her, or that Siuan was waiting to be kissed, and she had thought how easy it would be to lean forward and press their mouths together. A kiss did not mean anything on its own. It was only that people had decided it indicated love or lust that made it so special. 

 

But she did not know if she would be brave enough to do so when the time came. Girls like Myrelle and Alanna and Ellid traded kisses and stories of kisses as easily as hair ribbons, but for Moiraine the whole act seemed very solemn. It seemed an immense leap from the staid formality of courtship. She had only ever had a scarce handful of kisses, and those had been in controlled circumstances with someone of a far lower status than she, and he had asked her outright and initiated everything. This time she would have to be the instigating party, and she would have to act entirely without guidance, for none of the stories she had read on matters of this nature had been about two women. 

 

The thought seemed immensely daunting. She had done things she had previously thought impossible before, but this was a different arena, one less of technical ability and more of charisma. There was something about her that made women in particular dislike her, though she was never quite certain what. She seemed to have a particular quality that they found distasteful, and seemed to be missing many of the instincts that came to others naturally. 

 

That was what worried her most; she did not feel her own notions could be relied upon in matters of human nature. She felt at a permanent unspoken disadvantage with the world, as though there was some invisible thread that bound all people together but had somehow missed her in its weft. It had surprised her, for example, to learn that Siuan’s habit of laughing and joking with the other girls was not a clever affectation to make her appear less threatening, as Moiraine had first thought, but because her friend genuinely enjoyed their company. 

 

It had surprised her to realize that many people did things without having to think about why, or what purpose they might serve. Some of the girls who had become temporary lovers in their novice years seemed to come together without knowing exactly what had called them to do so, and often struggled to articulate it later. Many of the girls who had experience with boys either before or at the Tower seemed to feel the same. Moiraine had never quite understood that until she had met Siuan, and all at once found herself gripped by strange and irrational desires. She behaved differently around Siuan, foolishly, and desperately, too. 

 

She had never before contemplated kissing another person, and yet here she was, dreamy eyed as a milkmaid. She would sit and watch Siuan’s lips move without hearing a word her friend had said. They were full and looked wonderfully soft and plush. It would be the sweetest thing in the world to kiss her, to lick the inside of her bottom lip and worry it gently with her teeth. She imagined Siuan’s mouth closing over her own like a waterfall, soft and forceful at once, and sometimes she thought she could not wait a moment longer, could not wait even until they were alone. 



But then something very strange happened, and she did not think of kissing Siuan at all. One morning they were making their way down to the dining hall for breakfast when they found Merean waiting outside of Siuan’s room. That in itself was not strange, although Merean did not need permission to enter their rooms the way she might for a full sister. But Siuan had slept in Moiraine’s room that night, and by the way Merean’s eyes moved over them both, Moiraine was certain the Mistress of Novices could tell. She felt her face heating. But Merean was not interested in her at all; instead, she addressed Siuan directly, saying: “Come with me, child. I would speak to you.” 

 

Siuan knew better than to let emotion cross her face, but Moiraine could tell from the way Siuan tensed that her friend was just as confused as she was. Could Siuan really be being tested for the shawl so soon? That was impossible. They had been Accepted for less than a year, and never in Tower history had someone been raised that quickly. Siuan had only just mastered the hundred weaves. But she could not think of anything Siuan had done wrong that she herself would not be implicated in, either. What, then? Had another in Siuan’s family died? She hoped not, for her friend’s sake. 

 

Siuan returned before breakfast was over, but would not speak of what had transpired. No, it had not been bad. No, she wasn’t being punished. Then what? Later , Siuan said, and would not speak further. 

 

But that night, Siuan seemed to be avoiding her eye. Moiraine noticed Siuan had not touched her as much she had before she had spoken to Merean. Is that what their meeting had been about? She was suddenly afraid, even though nothing she and Siuan had done was strictly wrong. 

 

She had hoped Siuan would speak to her on her own, but at last she said: “Siuan, what was it Merean said to you?” 

 

Siuan gave her a long searching look, and when she spoke it was in an unusually hesitant voice. 

 

“She said—well, that she thought It would be best to speak to me, because you were Cairhienen and she didn’t think you would take it well. She said both of us were progressing quickly, and might become Aes Sedai in just a few years if we continue. But she said the circumstances under which we had been raised were quite unusual. It was almost unheard of for two Novices to be raised at once, and if one of us were raised to the shawl before the other, then, well…we would be expected to put the Tower first.” 

 

She paused there. None of what she had said so far was particularly unusual. They knew—indeed all of the Accepted knew—that their rank was merely a small step above Novice, and still far below Aes Sedai, and if one girl from a partnership was raised before another the relationship must be put to an end. As much was true for a relationship between two Novices when one of them gained the ring, and no one gained the ring without knowing it. 

 

“There’s something else, isn’t there,” she said. “Something you don’t want to tell me.” 

 

Siuan cast her eyes downwards, and Moiraine felt her heart sink. “I think,” she began, and swallowed, and went on:, ”I think she thought we were lovers, Moiraine.” 

 

“Lovers,” Moiraine said carefully, hoping her voice was steady. There seemed to be a great roaring in her ears. She was not certain if she was dismayed or excited or embarrassed or something else entirely, but her body had taken on an odd metallic feeling, and everything seemed to have suddenly grown far away. In truth, she’d had the same from others before—many of the sisters seemed to feel it their duty to remark on when she and Siuan were apart. They seemed to think the two of them were inseparable. It was nearly true, but she always seemed to catch a glimmer of suggestion in their eyes. And how she hated having to murmur and curtsy and say yes, Aes Sedai , or no, Aes Sedai , and not rebuke them, for whose business was it but hers who she went with when she was not in lessons? 

 

She realized what she had been feeling was dread. These past days she had been dreaming of a catalyst, an avenue by which she might discover if Siuan shared her feelings, and now it was here and everything seemed wrong. She desperately wished Merean had not said what she did, for she felt something irreparable had been ruptured between her and Siuan.  “What does it matter what we do when we’re alone? Public business is public concern, and everything outside of the public eye should be private. That’s why people get married and have affairs after. Oh, I wish she hadn’t said anything. Now everything will be so strange between us.” Fear and embarrassment made her oddly giddy, and her voice came out fast and high.  

 

“Well, Merean can think what she wants,” Siuan said, who was looking discomfited. “Bloody Merean can dive face first into a school of silverpike for all I care. What is it to any of them what happens between us?” They were speaking not to each other, but almost at each other, as though they were at crosspurposes, and saying nothing of import. With a start she realized Siuan must be as nervous as she was. 

 

That night, with both of them in one bed, felt exceptionally awkward, but it was Siuan’s room, and it would be far more awkward for her to leave. The days that followed were even worse. After that tense first night both of them slept resolutely in their own rooms. Often when she was alone in her room she would squeeze her thighs together or rock against a pillow and think of Siuan before she slept, but now the memory of it felt base and vile, and she found the thought of such pleasure repellant. 

 

In the daytime, an odd, prickly tension had grown up between them, and she felt she could not parse it. Without ever actually agreeing to, they had started arranging their days so that Myrelle or Alanna or Sheriam was always with them, so they would never have to be alone together. That made things a little better. But she missed Siuan. She felt there was a terrible ache in her. Anything, she thought, anything would be better than this not knowing. 

 

It was disconcerting to realize how many of her friends had really been Siuan’s friends, first. She and Myrelle had an old enmity, and she could not match Sheriam’s warm ebullience quite as well as Siuan could, though the red haired Saldaean was far closer to a girl named Coladara than either of them. She thought she might confide in Alanna, who was perceptive and gentle, and had always been kind to her. But Alanna had a fiery streak to her, and read a great number of romance novels besides, and Moiraine worried she might think the whole matter was faintly ridiculous. 

 

She knew she ought to have been more circumspect in building and maintaining alliances, and she berated herself now for lack of foresight. But she had never truly imagined that she and Siuan could be parted in this way. Siuan was powerfully charismatic and she had always served as Moiraine’s sponsor and protector. Daes Dae’mar was primarily a political game, and among nobility was played with deeds and titles and killing strokes, grand gestures with high stakes. Here in the Tower the nature of the game was far more mundane—lending someone a pair of stockings instead of deeding them a small village of arable farmland, gossiping in the back of a lecture hall about a hated instructor where a Lord or Lady might conspire to block the trade from the estates of a political rival—and Siuan seemed to understand the moves far more intuitively than she had. 

 

So she began to spend most of her time in the library. It was quiet there, without too much fear of running into someone she knew and being forced into awkward conversation. Reading and research had always calmed her; she knew that Verin and some of the others were eyeing her for the Brown Ajah, though she thought she needed more direction than research for its own sake. It was important for her to be useful. There seemed to be so very many problems in the world, and all the while people were spending their time learning battle weaves or debating things like the nature of truth or gentling men who probably would have died naturally on their own soon enough. 

 

But now she was not useful even for reading. Every time she tried to focus, she found herself thinking only of Siuan, replaying in her mind her friend’s gestures, the set of her face and her tone. Each time she saw it the memory seemed to take on a different cast in her mind, Siuan seeming sometimes embarrassed, then panicked, then calm and completely inscrutable. Sometimes she thought Siuan had been hopeful, but that was surely her mind playing tricks on her. 

 

In she had no idea what Siuan had been thinking that night. She had learned most of the common expressions and gestures people made by rote in Cairhein—it was necessary in the Great Game—and had grown accustomed to Siuan’s way of speaking, her tics and particular euphemisms and habits. And yet she herself had been too anxious to pay close attention to her friend. Everything she thought of now, she knew, was only speculation. 

 

On the fourth day of their odd separation, she was passing by Siuan’s room and felt the strange full-body tingle that let her know that Siuan was drawing on the One Power. A moment later she was surprised to hear a sound like a thunderclap, and one of Siuan’s muffled curses. So Siuan had fumbled one of the hundred weaves. Moiraine had been having trouble with the Power, too, of late—she had been far too distracted to maintain a steady focus—but such clumsiness from Siuan was a rarity. 

 

For a moment she imagined that Siuan felt as bereft and adrift as she did, and was seized by the urge to rush through the door and comfort her, something rash that was completely unlike herself, perhaps even kiss her. But then she heard another voice, a girl’s answering laughter, and Siuan and the stranger laughed together. She did not recognize the voice instantly—she thought it might have been Alanna or Myrelle, for their accents were similar—but she certainly had no interest in finding out. 

 

The next day Verin came upon her in the library. The plump Brown sister seemed ready to sweep past her with no more than a nod of the head and a perfunctory “Child,” but when she had gone a few paces past Moiraine she stopped suddenly and turned, as though she had only just realized the identity of the person she had passed. No, Moiraine certainly didn’t have the temperament of a Brown. She might get distracted from time to time, but she wasn’t that absentminded, surely. 

 

Odd, Verin said, in a low voice, almost as if musing to herself. I saw Siuan here only yesterday, and now here you are. I feel I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen you two apart. 

 

Siuan? Moiraine said. She hoped her voice did not seem overly eager, and thanked the Light that Verin was likely too distracted to notice. Siuan was clever, and a diligent enough student when the task called for it, but she disliked anything she found to be, in her words, a “needless poring over books.” 

 

“That’s right, the Sanche girl,” said Verin. Once again the Aes Sedai seemed to be speaking to herself more than anyone else. “Manetheren, she was asking about.” 

 

Moiraine could feel her face going red. She found herself inordinately grateful for Verin’s absentmindness now, for her mind was racing far too fast to give an appropriate reply if questioned. Siuan? Manetheran? She had not known Siuan to have any great interest in history, beyond what was necessary to give context to a certain lesson or event in the world. Unless this sudden interest had something to do with her… A part of her did not dare believe it. But the more she turned it in her mind the more she knew it to be true. 

 

That night she had just about made up her mind to go to Siuan’s room when a knock came at her door, and shortly after Siuan entered, her hair up in a scarf and a blanket clutched around her like a cloak. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said shortly, without preamble. 

 

“Oh, Siuan,” Moiraine said, so relieved she kept to her feet and drew her friend into a hug. To her relief Siuan hugged her back with great vigor, drawing the blanket around them both. “I missed you,” Siuan said, a little roughly, when they were both in bed, still shivering a little from the cold. There was a moment of awkwardness between them, and they melted into each other as they always had. 

 

“Oh, me too,” Moiraine said, and meant it. She hadn’t realized how badly she had missed the warmth of her friend in bed, and how much her presence was a comfort. Just the knowledge of Siuan nearby was enough to reassure her that everything would come out alright. Siuan’s body was wonderfully familiar, the soft weight of it against her, the sweet mellow scent of the oils she used in her hair, and the diffuse gentle warmth of her bare skin in places where they touched. 

 

She had spoken then, without precisely knowing why: “Verin said you were looking at some books about Manetheran.”

 

To her surprise, Siuan’s expression became almost sheepish. “I thought it would give me an excuse to talk to you,” she said. Her tone was unreadable, but she could not quite meet Moiraine’s eye. “I was going to find some obscure detail about tax levies or something to ask you about, but I missed you too much to wait even for that.”

 

Something about what Siuan had said—not just the words themselves, but how she had spoken them, almost shyly, though Siuan was never shy—put her in mind of a confession. Moiraine felt her cheeks flushing. Her heart pounded in her chest. “Oh, Siuan,” she whispered. She realized suddenly that this was the sign she had been waiting for. It was not the undeniable confirmation she had hoped for, but Siuan had made her feelings clear enough that to do nothing now might be taken as a rejection. 

 

She had visualized this moment again and again, turning it over in her head. What she would do, and what she would say. She would take Siuan’s face in her hands, a gesture of forewarning to give her friend time to pull away, and kiss her very gently on the lips. It would have to be fast, and gentle, before she lost her nerve, and chaste enough that it would not reveal how little experience she had. She had imagined they would probably be in bed, and she had imagined the angle, the rustling sound of the sheets, anticipating the need to tuck her hair behind her ears so it would not be in the way. But now, when it mattered, she felt frozen in place. 

 

Siuan had been the one to come to her room, and could not know Moiraine had been planning the same thing. She had been the one to angle for a reconciliation while Moiraine had done nothing. If she did not reciprocate soon, Siuan might interpret her silence as a rejection and pull away, and perhaps might never press the matter again. She had to say something, even if she could not bring herself to act.

 

“Siuan,” she said, “When we were talking about what Merean said…” She paused then. She was not quite certain what she wanted to say, but there was nothing for it now. “I—I didn’t want it to seem like I would be ashamed if you were my lover. I just—well, marriage is a public contract, you know, between people and then land and the state. That's why a High Seat can intervene and dissolve a marriage if there aren’t any heirs, because the contract is for the good of the House, too, and for the tenants, because a contested succession can be protracted and extremely bloody. That’s how I’ve always heard it. But what people do on their own time is their business. I don’t like the idea of people prying into my affairs, that’s all.”

 

Siuan was watching her, eyes liquid in the dark. Moiraine knew she was rambling, but she could not turn back now, and recklessly, like a boar caught in a thicket, she plunged onwards. 

 

“But what I mean is, I wouldn’t be ashamed if you really were my lover. I’d be proud, Siuan. Because you’re so—all of the things you are. You’re the cleverest girl in the Tower by a mile. Everyone knows that. I just had good schooling, the best tutors in Cairhein, but you—your mind is so beautiful. I think I could listen to you talk all day. And you’re beautiful too. If we were lovers I would look at you all day and never want to look away, not ever. And I’d be proud, because you chose me, when I wager you could have anyone.” 

 

Siuan reached out and brushed her fingers over the back of Moiraine’s hand, a gentle motion as if an artist shading a horizon, binding in one gesture the earth line to the sky. Only that part of them touched, that hand, those fingers, the pads soft and warm, the thin crescent nails. Moiraine barely repressed a shiver. Longing welled up in her at that small precise gesture, and fear, too, and a wild desperate hopefullness. 

 

“Moiraine,” Siuan said gently. “What is it you’re trying to say?”

 

She did not think she had ever heard Siuan speak this way, even to her. Her voice was so soft. She was nearly whispering. And still she touched the outside of Moiraine’s palm, her thumb now moving in slow gentle circles over the knuckle of Moiraine’s right index finger. Just a single point where their bodies met, yet all the energy in her body seemed to flow through it. 

 

“I can’t,” she whispered, mortified. “Please don’t make me say it. But you know, don’t you. You must know.” 

 

She could not speak further. Those words had cost everything she had. If she had not practiced for so many years to school her emotions she knew she could not have spoken then at all.

 

Siuan was studying her face. She had taken Moiraine’s hand between two of her own and seemed to be trying very hard to say something, and Moiraine began to fear she had misjudged terribly. Perhaps Siuan had missed her only as a friend, and her intentions tonight had not been amorous at all, and she had just left herself dreadfully exposed in her confession. Please , Moiraine wanted to say. Please don’t be kind to me just because you pity me. She thought it was probably better to be pitied than to be feared, or made anathema, but she thought she could bear anything but benevolence from Siuan right now. 

 

But then Siuan said: “What would you say, if I said I wanted to kiss you right now?”

 

For a moment she could not speak. Her brain seemed to have gone very white. She was conscious only of Siuan looking at her. Siuan wanted to kiss her. It could not be true. 

 

“Really?” she managed, and Siuan nodded. 

 

“I’d like that,” she breathed. For a moment Siuan was still and Moiraine thought the other girl had not heard her, but then Siuan took her face in her hands, and she closed her eyes, not daring to breathe, not even daring to hope so that the moment would not shatter. Then, light as the brush of a butterfly’s wing, she felt Siuan’s lips against her own. She had dreamed of this moment, obliquely, with a mind only for the mechanics of the act without really letting herself imagine how it might feel, and it was wonderful and frightening in equal measure, and over far too soon. 

 

“Was that okay?” murmured Siuan. “We don’t have to do it again. Because I know you said—“

 

She paused then, and Moiraine realized with surprise that Siuan was lost for words. “I suppose what I mean is I’d like to be with you,” Siuan said finally. “We don’t have to kiss if you don’t want to. We don’t have to do anything. But what you said, about us being lovers—that was how you really feel, isn’t it?” 

 

She nodded, feeling foolish. Of course she had spoken rashly and revealed too much of herself.  But Siuan’s face had split into a grin. “That’s how I feel, too,” she said. She took Moiraine’s hand and brought it to her lips and kissed it again and again, and then she said: “Light, Moiraine, I’ve wanted that for so long. Did you know that?”

 

Moiraine felt a great trembling move through her. She could scarcely think of anything at all. The enormity of what Siuan had told her seemed to be something small and far away, for the feelings inside her were too immense she had no space for another. “I think so,” she breathed, ducking her head, “But I didn’t dare let myself want it. And I’d like it if you kissed me again,” she added, hopefully, and a little nervously, too. Perhaps in those few moments since she had last spoken Siuan had changed her mind about her. Perhaps she had meant she had only wanted to kiss Moiraine once, just to see what it might be like. 

 

But Siuan leaned in and kissed her firmly this time, a real, unmistakable kiss that could only be a kiss between lovers. Siuan’s lips were full and soft and seemed to melt against her, and she had the sudden feeling that Siuan was drawing something wonderful from her, a tendril of life and happy desire that did not diminish but seemed to grow stronger and brighter the more they passed it between them. 

 

She had never liked the idea of kissing because it seemed so vulnerable, and because that way, so close to another person, you had no sense of your face. She needed to watch herself from a distance, and she had been certain that to kiss someone was to be consumed by them, drawn in to their own sense of themness and self. But it wasn’t like that with Siuan, because she knew Siuan and trusted her. Kissing Siuan felt indescribably good, even if a small part of her was aware that she was a very clumsy kisser, both out of inexperience and desire, though Siuan did not seem to mind at all. She seemed to be pulling Moiraine’s body against her with singleminded intent, as though she could not bear for even an inch of separation to come between them. They paused and broke apart and she pressed her forehead against Siuan’s forehead. The memory of Siuan’s mouth against hers still lingered in her like nectar and made her feel warm and achy and sweet and she could not stand to be parted from her even for a moment. 

 

Then they were kissing each other again. This time Siuan licked the outside of her lip with her tongue and she opened her mouth tentatively, almost instinctively, and she felt Siuan’s tongue move very delicately into the inside of her own mouth. She wondered, distantly, if this was a way Tairens had of kissing people, or something Siuan had learned from another person in the Tower. She had never kissed Cormanes this way before, or read of anyone kissing like that in any story, and found the sensation pleasant and a little strange. Tentatively she put her tongue in Siuan’s mouth, trying to do what Siuan had done with her, and she felt more than heard Siuan make a little soft sound in the back of her throat. She likes it , she thought, and thrilled at the notion, trying to fix the memory in her mind. She likes it when I kiss her that way. It seemed to her far sweeter knowledge than anything she had learned in the Tower, even sweeter than the Source itself. 

 

When they grew tired of kissing they lay holding each other, not talking, but lying together in the silent awe of togetherness. This closeness was not so strange–they often talked and laughed together in bed before sleep–but now she did not have to restrain herself from touching Siuan in all the casual little ways she had always dreamed of, running a finger down the length of her bare arm or touching her cheek or clasping one of Siuan’s hands between her own. No one in Cairhien ever touched each other that way in public, and she had not realized it was something she had wanted until she came to the Tower, because it had never occurred to her that it was something she could want. 

 

Siuan was trailing her fingers very slowly up and down her back, and somehow, more than any of their kisses, it was that gesture that made her realize that they were lovers, that she was beloved to someone. You could not touch someone this way if they were repellant or frightening or alien to you. Perhaps you could bring yourself to kiss or lie with them, as couples in political marriages often did, but not to touch them gently, with such fondness. Siuan really had chosen her out of all of the other girls in the Tower, and now she was touching her in this familiar, gentle way, and it felt very sweet. 

 

“When did you know?” she whispered. 

 

“I think I always have,” said Siuan. “As soon as I realized you weren’t just some prissy little noblewoman, at any rate. But I remember that winter—the first winter, looking at you and your cheeks were very pink from the cold—and I remember thinking you looked like you had been meeting a lover. And I felt very angry at that person, even though they weren’t real, because I wished that could be me.” 

 

The words dropped into the well of herself and took a very very long time to surface. She remembered that winter. It had been her very first few months at the Tower,  the time before her father died and everything had gone gray and very cold for a while, and Siuan had been her only friend. It had been an unusually snowy winter, and many of the ox teams carrying deliveries of food or linens had gotten stuck in a snowbank and needed to be channeled out with weaves of air or fire. She thought she could remember even down to the day, because Siuan had looked at her for what seemed a long time, and she had thought she’d said something wrong again and had never figured out what. But it seemed she hadn’t done anything wrong after all; in fact, it had been entirely the opposite. 

 

Years. Siuan had loved her for years. All of the nights of agony, burning with silent shame in the dark, and Siuan had been waiting to take her into her arms. 

 

“Oh,” she said softly. She felt too many things to name, but they were large and bittersweet and pressing against her from the inside out. 

 

Siuan said: “When did you?”

 

That was a difficult question. That night they had seen the two novices in the garden had just been the first time she had admitted it to herself, but it seemed she had always been noticing Siuan. She had never had close friendships, with women or otherwise, and it was difficult to know what was normal in an intimate but platonic friendship between two girls. Sexual matters embarrassed her, and any sight of nudity had made her blush. That obscured a great many things. Yes, she liked it when Siuan noticed her, and yes, a compliment from Siuan seemed to mean a great deal more than a compliment from anyone else, but Siuan had that effect on most people. It was her nature. She realized she could not say when her feelings for Siuan had begun. It seemed they had always been there. There had always been a confluence, a certain mutual recognition between them. 

 

“I don’t know exactly when it started, she said, but that night in the garden, when we saw…that was the first time I let myself admit it.”

 

“This summer,” said Siuan. “Skin me and salt me, but I was a fool.” 

 

Moiraine opened her mouth to ask why, but Siuan was already answering. 

 

“I didn’t want you to think there was anything to be ashamed of,” she said. “I knew you would torture yourself halfway to Shayul Ghul if you—well, I told myself as soon as I knew you felt the same I would say something. But I didn’t notice…or maybe I didn’t let myself notice—“

 

Something big arched up in her then, too large even to speak, and she buried her head in Siuan’s shoulder, and wrapped her arms around her friend, or the girl who was not only her friend but something else, too. 

 

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said gently, surfacing, making herself meet Siuan’s gaze. She cupped Siuan’s face and pushed back the little strands of coiled hair and cupped it again between her hands and kissed her, softly but insistently. She did not know what she was doing, and forgot how few times she had seen one lover comfort another, and that she did not know what to do, only that she needed to allay Siuan’s guilt and fill the place it had been with love. “You mustn’t blame yourself,” she said. “Oh, Light, Siuan. I have you now. Now, and for as long as you’ll have me. That’s enough. That’s more than enough. I still can’t believe it.”  

 

It was the most directly she had spoken of want or desire, and she felt oddly fevered after, but it had worked. Siuan gave her a wan smile, and they kissed, tentatively and then fondly, and then insistently so that a slow firm heartbeat started between her legs, and she squeezed her thighs together surreptitiously to quell it, but a part of her knew she was not quite ready to soothe that ache in her, not yet, but it hardly mattered because the kissing was so sweet. 








Notes:

if you made it this far thank you for rocking with me. they DO fuck in the next chapter just btw

Chapter 5

Notes:

this chapter is titled "the sex chapter" in google docs, which I feel is pretty self-explanatory

as always, apologies in advance for any grammar or punctuation weirdness that might have slipped through the cracks

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

 

It seemed they had a world of new things to explore. The first few days she felt so charged with excitement and happiness she could barely sleep or eat. She was so happy it did not feel there was room for all of it in her body, and that she was only a poor vessel for it. Once it had seemed that all the world moved behind some invisible curtain that she was desperate to break through and push away. Now she once again felt like she was floating, not out of loneliness, but because every moment with Siuan seemed to burn far more brightly than anything around her could. Even the One Power seemed diminished somehow, impersonal and cold when compared to the brush of Siuan’s fingers against her cheek. 

 

But at the same time, she felt a deep tenderness for all other lovers, and not just now, but for all of the lovers in all of history. How many millions upon millions before her had felt as she did now? She thought she would never quite lose her Cairhienan habit of public discretion, but now, the sight of other couples did not embarrass her as they once had, but made her want to smile. Me too! she wanted to tell them, fall on them and clutch their hands in hers. Me too! I know, too! And whenever she met Siuan’s eyes she felt a pang of secret joy, a frisson of knowing that moved through them both. 

 

They had done just about everything together except for making love, though she wanted to very badly. But she was not certain how Tairens viewed men and women sleeping together before marriage, let alone two women. Perhaps if she moved too fast Siuan would think she did not have control of her appetites and be frightened or disgusted by her. And more than that, she was afraid. She had never lain with anyone, man or woman, and had no concrete idea as to how she might bridge the gap of her inexperience. 

 

She had assumed that, once she and Siuan were lovers, everything beyond that first confession would come easily to them, buoyed by the same currents that drew them so naturally to each other. But now the question of coupling loomed equally as terrifying and unknown. Sometimes when she was alone in her room she would stand looking at herself in the small mirror above the washstand and imagine Siuan’s gaze moving over her like a hand, touching different places. Did Siuan want her in that way? Would she? Siuan was gentle and playful with her, but she longed, too, to be touched with real desire. 

 

She had always felt there was something off-kilter about her body, as though she stood half a step outside it. She thought she did not look so very different from some of the other girls in the Tower baths, but then she had never really dared to do more than glance. Any statues or paintings or tapestries she had seen that might offer some clue usually had the relevant particulars covered by an artfully falling cloth or strand of vine or hair, and if she happened to come across a more anatomical diagram in the Tower library, she turned the page immediately, before anyone could come by and notice her interest. 

 

And yet could not shake the feeling that she had an inherent flaw in her, a streak of rot or coldness that made people react to her in disgust or fear or disdain. She had seen the way dogs barked in the presence of full Sisters; perhaps she had a similar affliction, but one that affected people rather than animals. Perhaps she was marked in some small, crucial way, like a brand or tattoo marking out the body of a thief, and Siuan would see it and be repelled. Perhaps Moiraine had unwittingly revealed this secret flaw without knowing, and that was why Siuan’s touch had never become truly amorous. 

 

It was a fear that grew huge and looming when she was alone, but when she was with Siuan it shrank down to a pinprick in the back of her mind. Being with Siuan, being Siuan’s lover, lying beside Siuan and laughing and kissing each other, rubbing the back of Siuan’s hand with her thumb as they sat together, touching Siuan’s elbow a second longer than was really necessary or brushing away a stray lock of hair or kissing the warm skin of Siuan’s back as she did up the buttons of her dress—all of them were so sweet and undreamed of she felt she might burst with happiness. It had always been easy to forget her troubles around Siuan, but now it seemed they entered a secret world of bliss whenever they were alone, something indescribably wonderful and known only to them, and she forgot her nervousness. 

 

And Siuan was so light in her arms, so warm and brown gold and always laughing, and she seemed to like Moiraine so much! Whenever she had some small urge or desire Siuan seemed to match it, sometimes anticipate it. If anything, it seemed the more nervous she was to try something, the more Siuan would like it when they did. She clutched Moiraine against her when Moiraine straddled her lap and whenever she kissed Siuan in a new and different way, when she bit her or licked the tips of her fingers or kissed her neck, Siuan always said something like “I was hoping you’d want to try that.” Sometimes Siuan made little sounds when they kissed. She always grew embarrassed whenever a sound escaped her—they seemed so uncouth, so animal —but Siuan said she liked them. In fact, what she’d said was “I like to hear you,” and Moiraine had not been able to suppress a shiver at the words, and something warm and liquid and heavy had slid between them. 

 

And she loved to look at Siuan. She felt she could look and look and never be sated. It surprised how much of Siuan she already knew; her arms and her legs, her hands, so lovely in their dextrousness, the softness of the upper forearm, the cleverness of her rotator joints moving this ankle, this elbow, the warm soft stomach, the legs that had tangled with her own. Already she knew the size and shape of Siuan’s breasts from the times they had pressed against her in bed, a sweet secret pleasure, only the weight of them yet unknown to her. 

 

A part of her still could not believe she was allowed to look. She felt glutted with it, as though she were parched and gulping water. No action was too mundane, no gesture—the tiniest pivot of the wrist as she handled a spoon, the small kick to dislodge a stone from the tread of her slipper—too ordinary or small to be savoured. Only when Siuan was in bed beside her, when the pleasure of looking was replaced by the even greater and more undreamed-of pleasure of touch, of mutual want and tenderness, did she feel she could look away.

 

Then one night she sat in bed, watching Siuan catch her hair up in the silken headscarf she wore to sleep. Siuan caught her eye in the mirror and, this time, Moiraine met her gaze. They had kissed for near on three hours that evening, pausing every so often when they ran out of breath to talk and laugh and hold each other, and she felt so warm and happy with pleasure she didn’t feel bad being caught looking. If anything, she wanted Siuan to know she was admired. 

 

Siuan’s voice was fond, perhaps a little embarrassed. “I always see you watching me.”

 

“I just can’t believe you’re real,” she said. “That you’re here. All of this is so beautiful. I feel like I’m in a dream.” 

 

Then Siuan climbed in bed beside her, and Moiraine felt the familiar soft warmth against the outside of her thigh. But Siuan didn’t hunch down under the thin coverlet and pull Moiraine’s arm around her like she usually did when she was ready to sleep, nor did she want to kiss more. 

 

“I’m real,” she said, and her voice was low and serious. “I can promise you that much, at least. This is real.” She took Moiraine’s hand. She pressed it to her own cheek, and then to her arm and her neck and clavicle and to her mouth, and Moiraine felt a small glister of wetness beneath her fingers, the edge of a cloud before the sun. Then Siuan bit down on her finger, lightly, without pain, but she gasped nonetheless, a little choking sound of surprise and desire she tried to play off as a laugh. Siuan had bit her before, playfully, as they kissed, but never looking at her so directly, with that gentle but fastidious cast to her eyes that told Moiraine that Siuan was watching carefully, gauging her reactions, that Siuan had felt or somehow intuited the little quiver that started in the back of her throat and reappeared between her legs like a little diving bird. 

 

She cast her eyes down, embarrassed by the want that surged in her, but that was no better, for then her eyes fell over the rise of Siuan’s chest and down into her lap. Her body looked wonderfully soft, a more than faint suggestion under the white cloth. With some effort, she brought her gaze up to Siuan’s face. 

 

“You can look at me, you know,” said Siuan. 

 

“I know.” 

 

“Or you can do more than look. If you want.” She thought for a moment Siuan was mocking her, but her gaze was earnest and serious. 

 

“I’d like that,” she breathed, and her eyes, traitorously, moved again to Siuan’s chest, rising faintly with breath. Siuan followed her gaze, and grinned, and nodded. Tentatively she reached a hand out into the space between them, and Siuan took her hand and pressed it to her breast, and Moiraine’s heart nearly stopped then. As much as she’d touched Siuan in the past few days, she had never touched her there, though she desperately wanted to. She squeezed it gently, feeling its weight and firmness, embarrassed at the draw it held over her, yet unable to move her hand away. The flesh was so soft, more cloud than flesh, the nipple hard against her palm beneath the fabric of the shift. 

 

“Oh,” she said foolishly, face reddening. Her tongue seemed to have grown to several times its normal size. Longing was in her like a great flood, and she rubbed the nipple in slow circles with her thumb. It seemed that Siuan tensed and trembled under her touch, and suddenly she knew kissing was not enough anymore; the ache in her was too strong. She wanted Siuan’s hands to finally dip below her waist, wanted to lay Siuan down before her and feel her soft, molten body under her palms. 

 

“I’m still not sure how much you know of this,” Siuan said. “What with, well, what with you light blinded Cairhienan being how you are. But I want to touch you, Moiraine, if you’ll let me.”

 

It seemed as though some part of Moiraine had waited her entire life to hear those words. She could scarcely believe it. “You do?” she said, awe coloring her voice. Her heart pounded in her chest. She felt she had moved somehow out of the known world and into a space of uncharted possibility. For all that she had imagined this moment, a part of her had never really expected it to happen. 

 

“Yes,” said Siuan simply. Her eyes were dark and earnest. Moiraine trusted her. 

 

“Please,” she said, her voice ragged and low. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Sometimes it’s as though it’s all I can ever think about.” Her cheeks burned as she spoke. Oh Siuan, if only you knew! Yet it frightened her to speak such words out loud. One did not make such blatant declarations in Cairhein, and certainly not about matters of desire.

 

But Siuan only kissed her, as if to wipe away all of the nervousness and shame. Such sweet long kisses they were, Siuan’s mouth so warm and wet, coupled with the lighting pleasure of the darting tongue, and then Siuan began to kiss down her neck, and she gathered the hem of Siuan’s nightshirt in her fist and pulled Siuan against her so that their bodies were flush. Slowly, almost instinctively, their hips began to move together, seeking rhythm and pressure. There was a small insistent aching between her legs that had started when she had felt Siuan’s breast beneath her palm, and it was wonderful that she no longer need pretend not to feel it. 

 

For years she had been whelmed by the casual suggestiveness of platonic touch, plagued by oblique or explicit dreams, and in those things lay a combined sum of desires.  All of her half-decade of teenage fantasies seemed to rise in her in an instant and stun her with their multitudes. So many places on the body lay waiting to be touched, and so many places on Siuan’s particular body had become an object of her fascination in turn. 

 

How many times had she watched the small muscles move in Siuan’s forearms or her neck, or dreamed of licking the small vulnerable place on the insides of her wrists? They had for years enjoyed a close, tactile union, for all its chasteness, and she knew much more about Siuan than any other woman, knew the noises she made in sleep and the smell of her sweat, and her fantasies had carried a certain objective realism. So she merely lay stunned beside her, near catatonic with nervousness and desire, and tried not to giggle as Siuan fussed with her nightshirt.

 

It was too bitter cold to go about in their skins alone, but they managed to uncover a great deal of skin through the unfastening and rearranging and lifting up of hems. Each revelation of Siuan’s body wracked her with a new paroxysm of disbelief and longing, and she found her own body transforming under Siuan’s attention, too, felt the great pulsings and stiffenings in herself like the face of a flower under the sun. She had been terrified that she had been marked in some secret way, or that Siuan would find her somehow repellant, though she knew it was not rational to think so. But Siuan was breathless and huge eyed, taking in her chest and belly and the cloud of dark curls at the crux of her thighs. “So that’s what you look like,” she breathed reverently, and Moiraine felt a warm flush move through her. She cupped Moiraine’s face in her hands, and Moiraine stroked the sides of Siuan’s cheeks, and they kissed, urgent and tender and giddy with relief. 

 

Her inclinations that night were embarrassingly provincial; Siuan’s newly bared breasts and the soft arc of her hips and thighs and ass. All of those fleshy, tender softnesses had remained so coquettishly hidden in the tapestries and oil paintings that had, until now, been her only real erotic education, and she fell on them with a mixture of curiosity and desperation. She thought she must seem ridiculous, like a toddler or a puppy, wanting to touch everything around her, then put it in her mouth. But Siuan was there, encouraging her with little nods and little sounds, saying yes, like that, or no, not there, pressing her hands when they hovered with uncertainty over a new site of fascination. 

 

To her relief, Siuan did not seem much more refined in her desires. She gasped as Siuan lavished attention on her stomach and breasts, teasing the nipples with her fingers until they stiffened with desire and then licking them with the flat of her tongue. It felt very good, but what she felt most was relief that Siuan liked to touch and kiss her there. The actual pleasure seemed, she thought, to come from very far away, as though Siuan were touching someone else’s body and she felt only the ghost of the sensations this person must feel. 

 

She had always felt strange about her chest. In Cairhien she had always worn very high necked dresses with severe undergarments that projected from, rather than emphasized, any natural shapes of the body, and she had never had to think about it. She had never given much thought towards who she might marry and always assumed she would have a political match, if she indeed married at all, and would not care overmuch what he thought of her so long as he was not cruel.

 

But then she had come to the Tower and seen the ways in which women talked about that part of their body. How terrible it had seemed, to subject yourself to such great scrutiny! So she had begun to loathe that part of herself because of what it represented, even as the sight of Siuan’s breasts, half-glimpsed through a film of white batiste as they dressed or pressed against her in sleep, seemed to set her heart pounding and her face flooding with red. 

 

But Siuan did not say anything cruel, though she seemed to enjoy touching her there. The sensation surprised her. She tried to avoid touching her body at all, except casually, when dressing, and never for pleasure. She had never realized how sensitive she was there, or how good it felt to have her nipples pinched or rubbed. But it still did not feel quite right. 

 

And then Siuan stopped touching her entirely. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I can tell.” 

 

Moiraine felt a stab of dismay. She had known there would be something that would reveal itself when they were together, a certain flaw or lack. “It’s just very new,” she murmured, trying and failing to keep the urgency from her voice. “It’s just—surprising, that’s all. The way it feels.” 

 

But she could tell Siuan wasn’t fooled; Siuan never was. She could always tell when Moiraine was lying. “Fish guts, Moiraine!” she hissed, her voice urgent and low. “I don’t want to hurt you. This is supposed to be nice! Otherwise there’s no point.”

 

There was nothing logical she could say to that, so she crossed her arms over her chest, and immediately felt ridiculous and uncrossed them again. She felt faintly ill. Everything had been so wonderful, and somehow she had ruined it without knowing exactly how or why she had done so. Surely Siuan would not want to touch her anymore, if it meant that they would have to fight like this again. Now she felt dreadfully exposed and very vulnerable. 

 

They had unlaced the ties of her shift and pulled it down over her shoulder, so that her breasts and some of her stomach were bare. Very gently Siuan reached out and lifted the shift back over her shoulder and said: “Is that better?” She nodded, her face burning, and held her arms stiffly at her sides as Siuan laced the garment up once more. That felt much better, loathe as she was to admit it, her body once more becoming the abstract bundle of sensations it became when she was alone in the dark. Just a tool that didn’t mean anything, except for what it could do. She had never dreamed she could be with Siuan without sacrificing that part of herself, and would have borne the discomfort happily if it meant they could be together. That she did not have to made her feel guilty, as though she had taken more than her share of happiness. 

 

Then Siuan kissed her, as tender and gentle as their first few kisses had been. She felt achy and almost nauseous from being treated with such care, and the kiss made it worse. She was not certain if she wanted to get angry or to cry. She was seized by a strong urge to push Siuan away before Siuan could grow angry with her instead. Part of her hoped that Siuan would grow angry at her, that Siuan would rage or strike her, so she could have a feeling to replace the muddy unpleasant sensations roiling in her. But deep down she knew she did not really want that, and Siuan just kept kissing her, and slowly the feeling faded. The one that replaced it was glowing and warm and molten inside and slowly, tentatively, she felt desire begin to stir and quicken in her once more. 

 

They began to move against each other again, and she felt much better. It seemed she felt sensations more strongly when she did not feel so exposed, and her desire returned in full force. She brought Siuan’s hand to her chest, now covered by a layer of cloth—it really was much better that way—and stroked the small bud of her nipple with her own thumb. Siuan followed suit. The gesture sent an echo of pleasure directly between her legs and she gasped. Then Siuan began to kiss and touch her chest as she had before, leaving small wet circles against the white fabric, and the pleasure—which came not just from sensations themselves, but was heightened by Siuan’s kindness to her—was so intense she could not stop herself from making little sounds, and Siuan echoed them too, feeding them back to her. It felt surreal and very wonderful. Siuan’s hands were moving all over her body, insistent and curious and hungry, and she realized with a rush of awe and desire that Siuan really did want her. 

 

She still was not entirely certain what came after. She knew there was some matter of licking and touching, but it all seemed largely abstract. She had worried, initially, that Siuan might expect a feat of preternatural sexual prowess from her, but to her relief Siuan seemed as caught up in the newness of it as she. She felt they were driven together by a force beyond both of them, and she pressed against Siuan, pressing into her, clasping and cupping her body with a quiet urgency, feeling great alternating waves of arousal and tenderness. Siuan’s eyes were huge and gleaming, her hands gentle, hungry, and then Siuan’s thigh slid between her own, up against the crux of her, and she bore down against it without thinking, just as Siuan thrust gently against her, and they gasped at the same time and laughed. Siuan kissed her fiercely. There was hair in both of their mouths. “You’re so wet,” Siuan breathed. She was saying it over and over like a mantra. She seemed to need to convince herself it was real. “You’re so wet, Light, so wet—“ 

 

They began to move together, roughly, but with great enthusiasm. There was a small obscene sound every time Siuan’s leg pressed into her and Moiraine didn’t care. She was terribly exposed, the most tender, vulnerable part of her pressed into the body of another, but Siuan was not hurting her, nor was she chiding her for her weakness, but coaxing her, welcoming her, and Moiraine had never dreamed anything could feel so sweet. Eventually Siuan crooked her knee and guided her to move against it and she did so, rolling her hips in the way she sometimes would against a pillow in her room, and when she tired Siuan would press the top of her thigh up against her sex and kiss her and encourage her with soft, urgent words. 

 

More than once her tone seemed to dip into condescension, speaking to Moiraine as though she were a child or a clever pet, but when she saw Siuan’s eyes gleaming…she could not say the anger disappeared, more that it was transmuted into something else entirely; an odd, contradictory urgent pleasure. She drove her hips down harder against the proffered thigh, and Siuan smirked even more widely, so Moiraine kissed her. Siuan opened her mouth to deepen the kiss, and instead Moiraine bit her, hard, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make Siuan yelp in surprise. That would show her, she thought, smugly, sitting back for a moment to admire her handiwork. Siuan looked pleased, and more than a little awestruck, and her eyes glimmered with something Moiraine thought might be arousal. Perhaps she had not thought Moiraine capable of such directness in bed. That thrilled her, too. She had never really thought about how the dynamics of their relationship might translate when they made love, and it was spiky and exciting and new. 

 

Siuan’s hips were bucking too, canting and circling, and she angled her thigh to give Siuan something to move against. Siuan very nearly moaned at the first contact. Her apex was hot and soft and very wet, and Moiraine felt for the first time the texture of the dark, want-dampened curls that grew there, and felt the breath leave her body. Siuan was just as wet as she was. It seemed a miracle. The skin there was delicate and molten against her leg, the wet curls of hair like little paintbrushes. It was a slightly strange feeling against her bare skin, but she did not care, not now, and certainly not when it was Siuan. 

 

“You, too,” she breathed, her voice rough and wavering with surprise and awe. 

 

“Of course,” Siuan said plainly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, but she still could scarce believe it. It was just too wonderful. 

 

She did not know how much time passed that way, her body racked by wave after wave of desire. She was trembling with sweat and exertion, her hair and clothes sticking to her, the insides of her thighs burning with a wild heat. But the leg between her own was not quite enough. 

 

“Will you touch me?” she whispered. “Like you said you wanted?” And Siuan nodded and kissed her and finally said, in a voice that was very nearly reverent: “I’ve been waiting so long for you to ask…”

 

They changed positions with some awkwardness and Moiraine felt Siuan’s cool fingers glide up the inside of her legs, and dip into her apex—not inside, she said quickly, for she had tried that once and it hurt, an odd, burning tearing pain—but against her, very gently at first, tracing the soft cleft of her. She was swollen and trembling, impossibly aroused, and the light touch was almost unbearable. Could people really reach climax that way? But then Siuan began to stroke her in earnest, finding, with some initial difficulty, a spot where all pleasure seemed to be massed and lay waiting, so wet it was hard to find purchase, first rubbing, then circling the spot with quick, firm little movements, yes, like that, just like that, Siuan…

 

She cried out then, and the world was lost to her, all of her arching towards that singular point of light that was sooner and sooner to come, and it was all she could do to swallow down her cries. Then it came, and she was almost aching in the pleasure of it, and it seemed to last longer and come more strongly than anything she had achieved on her own merit alone, because this was Siuan who had done it. 

 

Siuan! Siuan who she pulled against her in that moment of white-hot pleasure that seemed to stretch on and on forever, clutching the soft dear body against hers and burying her mouth into her shoulder so as not to cry out, Siuan who was whispering something to her only half heard and later only half again remembered, words of encouragement that may have been of lust and passion and maybe even of love, though she could not brook that thought even to herself. Then at last there was nothing but a few fading strains of pleasure, and then she was breathing hard, totally spent, with Siuan atop her, breathing too. It was still dark in the room, and cold, but Moiraine was sweating as much as if it had been noon on the hottest day of midsummer with the sun at its zenith.

 

Siuan was watching her with an awed, dazed look. “Moiraine,” she said gently, her dark eyes burning with pleasure. She touched Moiraine’s mouth with the tip of her thumb, just enough that Moiraine felt the ghost of it on her tongue. She licked it, following some instinct she could not name, and Siuan inhaled a little, sharply, and shifted against her, a little involuntary motion. 

 

She took Siuan’s hand in both her own and guided the fingers to her lips. Those were the fingers that had touched her, the index and middle still coated with her wetness. She put the tips of them in her mouth, tasting herself, then licked down the length of them like a cat. She could not name what instinct called on her to do this, only that she wanted to. But the effect on Siuan was instantaneous; she gasped and shivered and again her hips bucked, seeking friction. 

 

Long had she thought of Siuan in this way, but they had, she saw now, always been one-sided fantasies where she herself was absent. She had never really considered the effect she might have on Siuan, or that Siuan might be affected by her at all, but to her wonder and delight she saw that it was true. She kissed Siuan’s neck the way she had once imagined a mystery lover would kiss Siuan’s neck, and she saw now it was she who had always wanted to but had not dared then to let herself hope for it. But how wonderful it was that it was her and not another! And Siuan rose against her the way she had imagined, too—that very same way! 

 

And how firm the grip of the hand in her hair when she bowed her head and licked with the flat of her tongue against Siuan’s exposed breast, and how sweet the low little sounds Siuan made against her! She could almost feel them starting under her mouth, little waves not yet reached their crest, rolling into the expressive sounds of her throat, the ribs rising and falling and rising again as Siuan sucked in air and arched against the attention of her tongue. 

 

Moiraine had no experience at all in the realm of pleasure, but Siuan was as innocent as she, or just about. She knew there was a large difference between projecting certainty and actively concealing one’s ignorance, so she didn’t apologize for her unskilled hands and grasping, hungry, eager mouth, but she let Siuan guide her attentions, guiding the crown of her head towards the other neglected breast, let Siuan place her hands where she willed. To her surprise, Siuan—for all her rough jokes—was tender and sensitive, responsive to even the softest touches. It was gentleness she rose and quickened to, and languidness, caresses and light little nips, Moiraine’s palms flat against her stomach and flanks, holding her within the bounds of herself. She remembered the urgent burning pleasure that had risen in her when Siuan had touched her and it awed her to realize that Siuan felt that now. 

 

“Can I touch you?” she breathed, and Siuan nodded eagerly, and she pressed a finger gently into the folds of her wet, swollen apex. The flesh there was so delicate and soft and the wetness—Siuan’s desire for her, she thought, in a rush of wild awe—was so evident it took her breath away. Remembering what Siuan had done, she sought gently for the swollen tender place where it had felt so good to be touched, and Siuan lifted her hand and pressed her fingers against it and showed her how to move them.  

 

She realized with a start that Siuan must have touched herself there before, and the knowledge glowed sweetly in her. She had been ashamed of what she had done alone in her room, not because she thought it was bad or wrong—it was merely an expedient way to restore her focus when her mind would not calm—but because it had felt so pitiful.  What Aes Sedai was so tormented by thoughts of her friend—her friend!—that she could not clear her mind? She had been certain Siuan hadn’t needed to resort to such measures, and each time she finished she would be filled with a consuming guilt. 

 

But Siuan knew so clearly what she liked that Moiraine felt certain that Siuan had touched herself this way before. And soothed her that Siuan did not like to be touched the way she liked to be touched, but differently, back and forth, not the hard firm little circles that had made her quiver so. If not for that she might have thought that she was dreaming. 

 

Then Siuan guided her fingers to slide inside and she curled first her middle, then her index finger into the wet, warm place. She slid in easily, with no resistance at all, and with Siuan’s guidance drew them back out again, and in once more. There was a certain rhythm to the motions, and she grew more confident, curling her fingers and thrusting with greater force, and Siuan made a low, sharp sound. 

 

“Was that okay?” she asked, suddenly nervous. 

 

“Yes,” said Siuan. Her eyes were closed, her eyelids fluttering softly, and Moiraine realized the sound she’d heard as a cry of pain had been a sound of desire.  

 

“But you’ll let me know, if—“ 

 

“Yes,” said Siuan again, gently, but a little impatiently this time. “Yes, I’ll tell you. Please, Moiraine, just, please—“

 

She bucked her hips gently. Moiraine began to move in her once more and felt Siuan’s hips rise to meet her, urgent and hungry. She had tried this once, on herself, but with Siuan there was not only no pain, but there seemed to be real pleasure. She felt Siuan clench around her, heard the little sounds, and as she moved her fingers in and out she felt Siuan moving with her, riding the meat of her palm, angling her hips just so, so that the sensitive place would press against the round jut of muscle beneath her thumb. Siuan’s eyes met hers. They gleamed as they did when she proposed something illicit and thrilling that was certain to get them caught. This whole time her hands had not strayed from Moiraine’s body, so that a circuit formed between them where they met, and in a moment of tender clarity she saw what Siuan wanted her to understand—that it what they did now was not the act of one party seducing the other, but a certain mutual undertaking. 

 

Then Siuan began to curse, and Moiraine felt the breath leave her body. She could actually feel Siuan clenching around her, and it came to her again that she was inside Siuan’s body, guiding her to climax, that Siuan wanted her, that it was her touch, her presence there that had gotten Siuan so wet and caused her to let out such sweet ragged cries like jewelled birds. She could not believe it and yet it was true, it must be, for she could feel Siuan clenching around her and the great waves of muscle and wetness and the desperate thrusts of her hips, so fast and urgent Moiraine could no longer keep up and focused on holding her hand still as Siuan fucked herself against her body. And then at last Siuan gave a great cry and pulled Moiraine against her, and Moiraine felt her spill over her hand, and thought she might have sobbed, cried out or even climaxed herself. 

 

When Siuan shuddered and went still, she kissed her forehead, each of her eyelids, and the tip of her nose, then her lips, and the place where her collarbones met, with its ruff of black inkwork. She felt expansive and childlike in a way she could not remember feeling for many years, comfortable and safe like a little animal in her nest, and not cold at all. She always felt lighter around Siuan, but this was different because she was freed from the pretense of chasteness, and the terrible uncertainty of not knowing. She still felt very tender and protective, so she leaned forwards and pressed her tongue to Siuan’s bare shoulder. Siuan laughed in surprise, a sweet, low rumbly sound, but she did not pull away. 

 

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she said. 

 

“Lick my shoulder?” She did not think Siuan’s voice was mocking, but she felt herself flushing nonetheless.

 

“I think you know what.” She was pleased to find that the words came out playful and light, not defensive as she’d feared. 

 

Siuan grinned at her, and they laughed, as much in relief and happiness and sheer exhaustion as anything either of them had said. “For me it was the back of your leg, behind your knee. You have a freckle there. Did you know that?”

 

She didn’t, but she rolled over so Siuan could kiss her there, and the warm kiss in the unexpected place made her giggle. 

 

It felt strange to behave this way now. In her memory, she had always been a sober, oddly adult child, frightened of her uncles and what people thought of her, and knowing that her father, as much as he loved her, could not truly protect her. But she saw now that had not always been the case—when she had been young and her mother was still alive it was as though lived in a warm golden world. It was that state she returned to now, that feeling of being loved and safe. No matter what else happened, she thought, drowsing in the warmth of Siuan’s arms, she would always have this moment of liquid happiness. 

 

***

 

She slept, at some point, for a scarce handful of hours, and woke again full of energy, the memory of what they had done burning in her like wild golden honey. Shortly afterwards Siuan woke, too, and they kissed, softly at first and then more urgently, and soon they were moving against each other once more. She was very glad of that, for she felt that, sweet as their first time had been, she was not quite sated. This time the awe of discovery was less in the foreground of her mind, though it was all still very wonderful, and they could focus more on pleasure. 

 

The first time the climax had been very emotional and made her ache and she had almost thought she might start to cry. This time Siuan seemed to have remembered what she liked and seemed to get her there a little more quickly and hold her there for longer, and she was loose and warm from sleeping with Siuan’s body against her, already wet from her first climax and from making Siuan come, and the pleasure was fluid and elastic and soft. Somehow she wasn’t embarrassed to cry out, and afterwards she and Siuan put their foreheads against each other and laughed in disbelief and joy. 

 

This time when Moiraine touched her, Siuan did not have to guide her hands, and she felt very pleased with herself. She didn’t enter Siuan this time, either, but rubbed that sweet place just above her opening, as Siuan had done for her. There were still several hours until morning and there was no great urgency save the natural urgency of desire, and they spoke almost casually to each other as her hand moved and Siuan’s hips rose against it. She said all of the things she liked about Siuan’s body and Siuan said all of the things she liked about hers. 

 

“I like your hands,” Moiraine said. “And I like your fingers. I always liked your fingers. You’re very good with them, she added, feeling her face heat.

 

“I like your neck,” said Siuan. “I always wanted to kiss you there. I like the soft place under your jaw. I like that you trust me enough to let me kiss you there.” 

 

There had been such a long list of places she had mooned over before she and Siuan had become lovers, but suddenly she could not think of any of them that seemed decent. 

 

“I like your cunt,” she admitted, half in shock at her own daring, stroking the dark hair that grew above it with her thumb, and when she said that Siuan’s hips bucked involuntarily into her hand. “I like touching you like this,” she said, encouraged. “I like knowing that you feel good.”

 

“Light,” said Siuan, in a low voice, but she didn’t seem disgusted. Siuan almost never cried, but Moiraine thought her eyes looked a little wet then.  “Oh, Moiraine—“

 

“Was that wrong?” 

 

“No, I—I just never dreamed I’d hear you say something like that. I think it was one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. Come here.”

 

And Siuan pulled her into a kiss. It was a firm, tender kiss. She took Moiraine’s face in both hands and kissed her with singleminded focus. Her lips were full and incredibly soft and Moiraine found it very hard to focus on both touching her and kissing, but Siuan did not seem to mind. 

 

“Well, I like yours, too,” Siuan said, when they broke away. “I like how it feels and how it smells when I know you want me. I’d like to know how it tastes, too, if you’d like that.” 

 

“Yes,” she said instantly, and a wave of longing arced through her. Somehow the thought of Siuan making love to her that way had never really crossed her mind. She was not certain how something like that could work, or if there would be the needed amount of pressure, but the thought of Siuan with her head between her legs, Siuan kissing her there like it was a mouth, made her shiver. 

 

She was pleased to find out that Siuan had touched herself before, as she’d thought, and that Siuan had thought of her while doing so. Her fantasies had been more explicit than Moiraine’s had been, and Siuan herself had been present in them, too, but they had been more sentimental, too, mostly focused on them holding and teaching each other. Siuan grinned a little when Moiraine told her about the dream of them and the river, but she said—very quickly—that it was because she had been warned almost as soon as she could walk to avoid riptides and white water. 

 

Then she said, grinning for real now, that she would have to teach Moiraine to swim, though, if her skills were so lacking. That made her blush bright red, regardless of anything they’d done prior, and she could tell Siuan knew it. But she had her own tricks, too, and she let her hand pause its motions and snake up Siuan’s body to cup her breast, and she took Siuan’s nipple between her thumb and forefinger and twisted, so that Siuan cried out and her hips bucked against air. 

 

Again she felt that Siuan was watching her with that odd look of surprised desire, and when she left off teasing she was delighted by how quickly was able to bring Siuan to her second climax. This one was not as explosive as the first, and she seemed to slip into it like a seal into water, her eyes closed and her brow furrowing, but she stayed there for quite some time while Moiraine covered her face with kisses. She discovered she liked watching Siuan come, for she disappeared into a world of private pleasure that was entirely her own, but there was something lonely about it, too. 

 

Afterwards they lay, sweaty and languid and breathing hard and holding each other. She felt filled with a desperate happiness. She inhaled deeply the smell of Siuan’s hair and her neck, the warm familiar sleep smell that had been all but replaced by the smell of their desire, a warm, earthy mushroom musk that hung over everything. It was so strong she felt certain that anyone who entered the room, or even anyone who passed by while holding the One Power would know instantly what had happened, but she felt oddly pleased. She felt so happy she did not care if the entire Tower knew what they had done. 

 

“You’re doing that thing with your feet again,” said Siuan by her ear, startling her. She had been rubbing the soles of her feet together again, without realizing it, and ceased the motion at once. 

 

“No, don’t stop,” said Siuan. “I just noticed you always do that when you’re comfortable.” Her voice took on a tinge of bashfulness and she said: “That’s how I know when you’re about to fall asleep.” 

 

Something warm and aching arched through her at those words, and she felt for a moment like she was going to cry. Siuan liked her that much. Somehow it ached in her nearly as much as if Siuan had uttered some grievous insult. Then Siuan kissed her forehead, and she did feel her eyes go watery then, just a little. 

 

“Moiraine,” she said. Her voice was serious. “You know I care about you very much. No, listen. I need you to know—I need you to know that what we just did…I would never use that against you. Never. I don’t think I could. Light, Moiraine, you’ve always been so beautiful, but tonight—“

 

And there she might have blushed, for she knew that Siuan meant when I made you come , or perhaps when you came for me , which would be more like Siuan, she thought. But in her odd exalted state it seemed that there was no shame. 

 

“—tonight, well, I don’t know.” She ducked her head, and Moiraine realized with some awe that Siuan was lost for words. 

 

“I didn’t think it could be that way,” she said finally. “You were so gentle with me. I grew up hearing men joke about it, or women talking about it like it was some kind of nuisance, like something that would only ever lead to more problems they’d have to solve. But it didn’t feel that way at all. It was nice. Like someone taking care of me when I was sick.”

 

“Oh, Siuan,” she said. Her heart ached. She kissed her. 

 

“I used to lie awake for hours and try not to think about you,” she said, almost shocked by her own boldness. “I would dream about you all the time. Not just—not just those kinds of dreams, she added hurriedly. She remembered the dream in which Siuan had given her the flowers, and how wonderful she had felt in it, expansive and full of joy. “Nice ones, too.” 

 

“‘Those kinds of dreams’ can be nice too,” said Siuan, grinning, and kissed her forehead. Moiraine felt warmth move through her, starting from the place Siuan’s lips had touched and sliding down, as though someone had cracked an egg against her temple, and they lay together in a silence that felt nice, tender and companionable and sweet. She had never dreamed anything could be quite like this—this gentle easiness with each other’s bodies now that there was no shame, her hand cupping Siuan’s breast, and Siuan palming her ass, running a thumb over the gentle curve of it. 

 

They had made love not just once, but twice now, and she realized there was no way of being with Siuan that she was not allowed to want. How wonderful that was. She remembered once more the dream she’d had, of Siuan and the flowers, and how expansive she had felt, how sure she had been of the future stretching before them. And the future was here now. It was theirs. She marvelled. 

Notes:

there's probably going to be one more chapter after this one--if you've made it this far, thank you for sticking around! :-) love you

Chapter 6

Notes:

if you see me posting this six months after the last chapter no you don't ;-)

either way thank you to everyone who's read this far. love you mwah

*content warnings for violent intrusive thoughts & brief mentions of arranged/underage marriage and corporal punishment in keeping with the general setting and social mores of the books*

Chapter Text

Days passed, and then a week, and the knowledge that she had lain with Siuan—not just once, either, but many times— began to feel more a fact of her life and not just a blissful dream. 

 

The first flower of desperate passion, where they had been awestruck with the novelty of sex and shameless in their desires, had receded just enough that a fragment of her cautious, watchful self had returned. But she had changed somehow. She was not certain she believed, as some did, in the notion of virtue, or that one must remain chaste and inviolate until they were wed. And yet she could not deny that the trust and vulnerability of lovemaking had brought an essential shift in her. There were moments where she was conscious not only of herself, but of the feeling of herself in Siuan’s arms, as though they were one being, twined somehow, two saplings sharing the same roots. 

 

They were still having a lot of sex. It seemed they made love, or intended to, nearly every day. Before being with Siuan she had never considered herself a particularly sexual person. She felt isolate, fundamentally cold, a consummate loner. The cool directness that had once seemed precocious in childhood only made her inexperience laughable as she aged. Yet lately something had unlatched itself in her. 

 

Even when she had lain awake at night gripped by agonies of desire she had never quite imagined she could want it that much, and yet she did. Her body felt swollen, delicately inflamed, liable at any moment to take up that slow throb of pleasure. She was helpless before even the slightest things; Siuan’s smell, the scent of her hair or a flash of the warm scent of the juncture of her neck, a hand against the back of her arm, a glimpse of the glittering wet inside of her lip. A moment of strain or sudden motion where a plane or softness of the body was thrown into relief against the fabric of her dress. That last was enough to stupefy her, standing briefly frozen with her heart racing and her mouth dry with wanting. 

 

Even in a country like Cairhien, she had still seen enough of human behaviour to know how rich noblemen treated their servants, the pinches and grasping touches and reaching hands, how the women—it was usually, although not always, women—seemed resigned to a barrage of constant violations. At times she felt want in her so strong it seemed almost a physical pain, but she could not imagine anyone wanting to touch or be touched by her. Not in that way. Never in that way she saw. 

 

When she thought of women it had been of thwarted longing, desperation, frustrated desire. She must let no one else know what she felt, not the other ladies at court, who would be sure to exploit such an evident weakness, and certainly not those women who ranked beneath her and would be powerless to resist her advances. She had never imagined there were ways of touching someone that weren’t about getting power over them. 

 

But then she met Siuan, and the ache she had carried inside her for so long had settled, taken root, and at last begun to grow. Such as humiliating passion when nursed in secret, but when shared it was miraculous. Sometimes when they lay together it felt like the most innocent thing in the world and she felt herself wide eyed with the wonder of it. Such tender sensations. Little animal sounds, Siuan’s and her own, a conversation of heedless pleasure, a mutual urging. The joy and pride at the climax of the other, and the gentle sweetness that awaited upon surfacing.

 

It was as though she returned to a state of her own prehistory, regaining once more a sense of who she had been when she had no fear, if, indeed, she had ever been that way. It seemed impossible to imagine a time in her life where her sense of self had not been pervaded with disgust or doubt. It was as much a part of her as her capacity for cruelty. 

 

But with Siuan, she didn’t feel wrong. The way Siuan touched her, the awe in her face—it was as if Moiraine was not herself at all, but an innocent, someone whose aims were noble and whose soul was pure. Someone who deserved to be touched so gently, to be treated with care and not apathy or contempt. Closing her eyes as Siuan’s hand slid between her thighs. Like that, just like that— such selfish words, she thought, another person’s words, words that escaped her before she had the presence of mind to call them back, but Siuan seemed so pleased to hear them, as if Moiraine had every right to feel pleasure, even to ask for it. 

 

The first time Siuan had made love to her with her mouth, she had kissed her way down Moiraine’s torso, following the line of soft dark hair that led from her navel to her delta, where she thought no one would ever kiss her. She had gone so slowly, had been so careful, and even when her head was between Moiraine’s legs she said: “Are you ready?” 

 

“You don’t have to,” Moiraine said. She was worried about the smell, the taste, the angle of Siuan’s neck. “Not if you don’t want to.” 

 

“But I do want to,” said Siuan, and Moiraine decided that she meant it. 

 

“Okay, then,” she breathed.  

 

She was trembling. Siuan spread her thighs gently and licked into her and it seemed that her entire body convulsed at that single stroke. It was not so much the stimulation as it was the sensation of being cared for that astounded her. She could feel Siuan tracing her with her tongue, an act as gentle as kissing. She had never looked closely at that part of herself, and tried as much as possible to avoid thinking of it, but knew the flesh there had a certain alien quality, almost repellent with its vulnerability, the animal-like scent. And Siuan was kissing it! She stared, nervous and aroused in equal measure, waiting for the moment of inevitable disgust, but it did not come.

 

Siuan’s hands were warm on her hips. Every so often she would surface, kissing the inside of Moiraine’s thighs until Moiraine was sticky almost to the knee with spit and desire. Her legs were trembling. She felt as if lighting was running through them, through her whole body, alongside the sweet blood-pulse of desire that was growing so wonderfully familiar of late. She moved her hips a little, chasing the feeling and rocking up against Siuan’s nose, which made them both laugh, and suddenly she wasn’t afraid anymore. She felt messy and aroused and happy, shocked as she so often was by how ordinary it seemed. 

 

She had told herself she would not cry out, but Siuan was so attentive, so tender, that when the time came she forgot she was meant to be a stoic. 

 

Then she took Siuan in her mouth and Siuan said: “I can’t believe it’s really you.” One pillow folded beneath her sacrum to raise the cantle of her hips and her hands in Moiraine’s hair. She smelled of musk and earth—a strong smell, though not unpleasant—and tasted of salt, and her body rose and fell in arch exhortations of desire and Moiraine ached with the mutual pleasure of it, a slow drumbeat pulsing in her as she licked and sucked with untrained, eager abandon. She felt none of the disgust or resentment she imagined Siuan must have felt towards her. It was wonderful to be here like this, inhaling the taste and scent of Siuan’s body, palming slow circles around the place where Siuan’s ass met her thigh. 

 

Just a few weeks ago, touching Siuan there for even a moment would have seemed an impossible luxury, a memory to be savored long after the event had passed. Now, she had her head between Siuan’s legs and Siuan was shaking under her. “Please, Moiraine,” she kept saying. “Like that. Please.” Moiraine thrilled at those words, the confirmation she desperately wanted but could not debase herself enough to ask for. Siuan’s desire for her seemed so wonderfully impossible, like something out of myth. So it really is me she wants, after all. She still could not believe she had been chosen for this. That she had been granted this privilege. A sweetness too great even to be dreamed of before this moment. 

 

Afterwards they lay and held each other, nestled beneath the covers with the bedlinens as a tent over their heads. They were both naked, something Moiraine had feared at the start of their courtship but that was already becoming commonplace, at least around Siuan. She had been certain that Siuan would find some fault with her body or use the moment of vulnerability to exact some manner of humiliation. Even the first few times they made love it had been at least partially clothed. But when it happened she had scarcely noticed, and neither, it seemed, had Siuan, except for a few appreciative words, not much different from what she’d said when they were in both their shifts. Now they would climb in bed bare and shivering and laughing, each seeking out the warmth of the other’s body and holding fast until fondness gave way to desire. 

 

Safe in that warm, parchment coloured world, she wondered how many of her ancestors had felt what she felt now. It was no secret that she came from a lineage that knew little of love. How many cousins and aunts and grandparents were begotten in anger or resentment or terror? How many had been like her, but had lived in permanent denial of their own natures, married to someone they knew they could never come to love? Her brother had wed Morgase Trakand when the Andoran girl-queen was only sixteen, an age when Novices still wept in their beds for homesickness. Moiraine knew that could easily have been her fate, too, if she had been given to a man as her uncles had wanted… 

 

She thought she might have known more pleasure in a few weeks than most of her bloodline had known in their lives entire. Before she had come to the Tower she had never dreamed even of companionate love. She had not imagined the camaraderie she and Siuan had come to share for the simple reason she did not know such things existed to want. That she might one day choose her lover, that this person could be a girl, and her friend, the one person who knew more about her than anyone in the world, that she would feel such a torrent of desire and tenderness, and that these things would not humiliate her but be wanted, requited—she could never have dreamed it. 



***

When she was eleven, she had been summoned to her mother’s bed, and her mother had talked to her about sex, and told her what it was, and where children came from. 

 

By then her mother was deep in the grips of what everyone called “the sickness,” either because it had no name, or because to speak its name in its fullness would be to give dreadful prophecy to it. She would stand before the mirror and wisps of hair would come away in her hands. Her body rattled and trembled like the brittle, red-brown leaves in the months at the cusp of winter. She spent most of her time abed, reading and drinking cups of hot, clear broth, but when she spoke to Moiraine her gaze was lucid and her grip was strong. 

 

“They’ll tell you this is something to be ashamed of,” she had said. “That it’s something you must never talk about, except to your husband. But that’s not true. There are other places in the world where they see it as part of the body, no different from breathing. And you mustn’t let them tell you thirteen is old enough to be wed. You’re still a girl. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’re so bright and so fiercely determined and the wrong man will take these things from you. When you marry—if you marry—it must be to someone who makes you feel as though there is no shame. My smart girl. You must promise me—“

 

Her mother had been a scholar, and it had been a scholar’s telling, anatomical and dry with her mother’s tendency towards wordiness in her oration, a tendency Moiraine herself would take on in later years. When she looked back on that conversation, what she remembered was the sudden passion in her mother’s voice and how it had surprised her, and how, even at eleven, she had suspected what her mother asked was impossible. 

 

She had grasped, only vaguely, that others moved in a world propelled by invisible rules; rules she did not know and that her parents did not or would not follow. But she’d had almost no sense of herself beyond what her parents told her—a bright girl, perhaps a scholar, one day, who loved to hunt and to ride, who liked animals almost more than people. She had never quite comprehended the scope of those spheres of expectation and cruelty through which she so blithely moved. 

 

Now, though, the lady’s maids and seamstresses who scrubbed her and teased her hair and fitted her for the first time into the sharp, elegant, constricting women’s gowns—hired not by her father but her aunts and uncles for once—seemed so different from her parents and their warm, thoughtful circle of historians they seemed to be of another species entire. Suddenly her sister Anvaere’s strident cruelty did not seem so out of place as it once had. Suddenly her sister Innloine’s endless talk of gowns and soirées and couplings, of whom was seen with whom and at what time and in what place, did not seem mindless chatter, as it once had, but a warning. She had learned Daes Dae’Mar late in life for a Cairhienan, and threw herself into the learning with a dreadful intensity. She knew she must always be cognizant that everyone wanted something. If she did not learn that, she would perish. 

 

But what did Siuan want? She had asked herself that so many times in the years she had known the Tairen, and the truth was, Siuan didn’t seem to want anything, or, at any rate, nothing she had been able to fathom for all her years of guessing. Siuan was brusque at times, but fiercely loyal. In bed, in the new, marvellous world of sex they had only just discovered, she was attentive and playful in turns.  At night, during their lovemaking or when they held each other before sleep, she would lean her forehead against Moiraine’s forehead and whisper things like “I can’t believe it’s really you,” or “I can’t believe I get to touch you.” She had refused just about every gift Moiraine had tried to give her, but she conjured long, inventive stories in which they travelled the world together, hitching a ride on wagons and sleeping under canvas tarps or in haylofts and narrowly escaping trouble with little more than the clothes on their backs. Hardly the behavior of someone who craved influence or station. 

 

And when Siuan noticed Moiraine looking at her, she—changed. A sudden bloom of redness at the edges of her ears, her cheeks growing warmer, seeming faintly to deepen in colour. Her posture would change, too. Growing up on the docks, she was used to being punished for small infractions and seemed to tense at any indication of having stepped out of line as if steeling herself for a blow. But when Moiraine looked at her—really looked, in the way she still couldn’t quite believe she was allowed to, savouring the sweet peaks and angles of her body beneath her dress—Siuan would swell, soften, growing almost coy under her gaze. Later, if they made love, she would be all ardour and hungry urgency, taking Moiraine’s hands and guiding them to her body, and Moiraine realized that her other fear—that Siuan would think Moiraine was taking advantage of her, was equally unfounded. 

 

She still felt guilty, but a small part of her had begun to accept that Siuan liked her and enjoyed sharing her pleasure and her desire, not out of fear or ambition or an instinct to flatter, but…something else. She didn’t understand that something else. It wasn’t rational or advantageous, but each time Siuan asked “Is this okay,” or seemed to blossom with pride when Moiraine laughed at one of her quips, she felt more and more certain that Siuan liked it when she was happy. 

 

The sensation was so foreign, so entirely alien to her that she had not even known to notice its absence. She was used to people wanting things for her in a noble, abstract way—stability, or a powerful marriage, or a good husband, which she knew from looking at the men and women in her family together meant one who she could tolerate and who would not beat her. The older women who brought her food and brushed her hair and laid out clothes for her seemed to feel towards her a certain parental tenderness that unnerved her, and called her “the poor thing,” as in “that poor thing, with her mother gone as she is, and may the Light bless her.” The Grey Sister at Cairhien court who had taught her how to focus with the Kesiera seemed excited about her prospects in the Tower, but only, perhaps, because she’d receive credit for finding such a powerful channeler. 

 

All of these hopes, and yet it seemed more as if they coalesced around the shape of a person, one with no clear attributes who need not have been her at all. They could likely have plucked any young girl off the streets of Cairhien and would hardly have noticed the difference. 

 

Siuan noticed. She seemed fond of qualities that Moiraine felt were too ordinary and unremarkable even to merit comment, let alone any particular fondness. Siuan seemed to like to make her laugh. She noticed instantly when Moiraine stopped covering her face with her hand and laughed freely for the first time in a long time. Siuan found her prudishness charming, and her intense focus endearing rather than strange. She liked Moiraine’s anger and thought that she was brave and she spoke these things aloud as Moiraine lay beside her in the dark, shocked at the detail of this particular manifest. 

 

It was not that she believed she was not a valuable or talented person—these things were objectively untrue. She had just never considered herself as someone with a distinct personality. And yet, seen through Siuan’s eyes, she seemed to be an entire other person. She would lie beside Siuan and have the feeling of meeting herself for the first time, not a wretched creature at all but a strange and admirable young woman, called forth suddenly from the air like the sounds she made in their joint undulations of pleasure. All of them alien and surprising to her. The calls of strange birds. 

 

***

 

Her greatest fear, greater even than Siuan laughing at her, or at her becoming a laughingstock of the Tower, even greater than the fear of some Cairhienin faction threatening Siuan because of her, was the fear that she would hurt Siuan. She had hurt people before. As a girl she’d had terrible rages caused by what seemed like the smallest things—a sound or the way something felt against her skin, and when servants held her down she would lash out, striking and kicking them. As a child she had bit people without provocation. Sometimes the feeling was so intense that it felt like her body was trying to turn itself inside out and the methods she’d learned to control it—pinching or biting or scratching so hard she broke the skin—seemed to frighten and bemuse people. 

 

Cruelty, to her, had always been something she had been born into, like family or country. That she abhorred needless violence and those who abused their power made little difference. Being noble and just—she did not think she would ever aspire to calling herself Good—was the domain of other people. Of those who had not been born Damodreds. She had moved through the world and assumed others could sense the evil in her as plain as daytime. It was, she thought, why Elaida sought her out above all others, why groups of girls seemed to move slightly apart from her in the corridors. 

 

She recalled Siuan’s surprise when Moiraine insisted they halt their lovemaking because she had seen, for the briefest moment, an expression that looked like a grimace on Siuan’s face. How Siuan had insisted that it was fine, that they continue, that she’d had far worse on the docks of Tear and wouldn’t have Moiraine treating her like a soft-handed noble. But Moiraine insisted. It was not that she was trying to be good. It was that the idea of hurting Siuan, even without knowing, of causing any pain that was not inextricably twined with pleasure, was deeply repellant. She would not get even the smallest ounce of pleasure knowing Siuan was even a little unhappy, and she said so, and Siuan knit her brows and pushed her jaw out and didn’t say anything. 

 

At last Siuan said: “It’s just…you’re so nervous around that kind of thing. I’d never want to make you feel embarrassed, or…like there was something wrong with you for wanting something.” 

 

“So you would just let me hurt you?” And, unspoken, a far colder and more frightening thought, one Moraine did not speak: Is that the kind of person you think I am? 

 

“No,” said Siuan warily. “It’s just, it’s different between me and you. You’re so—innocent.” 

 

Moiraine wanted to bristle at that—after all, she had survived for years in the Sun Palace, with scarcely more than her name and her own wits for protection. But Siuan was right. She had, in many ways, enjoyed a soft life. Her virtue had always been guarded—closely, even dogmatically, at times—but so too had her safety and comfort. She had servants to help her dress and to change her bedclothes and clean her chambers. She took hot, sweetly scented baths though she never heated or drew the water herself. If she did not like the dishes served at a meal, she could have someone bring her another. She had been part of an arsenal, but she had never been disposable.

 

“That doesn’t mean you should just ignore what you feel.” She paused, searching for the words. “I don’t care if you won’t let me buy you a horse, or anything else, for that matter, and I know you don’t mind that, well, that I’m still not very good at any of this—“ She paused, feeling her face heat, too embarrassed to go into any more detail—“But I won’t let you hurt yourself for, well, Light knows what reason, because I don’t.” 

 

Siuan opened her mouth to say something, but Moiraine cut her off. 

 

“You can be all attentive with me, but with you, it suddenly doesn’t matter anymore? Light, Siuan, I knew you were stubborn, but I didn’t realize you were stupid.” 

 

She realized, with some mortification, that she had started to cry. She hadn’t cried for years before she and Siuan had become lovers—not because she didn’t want to, but because she just couldn't—and now she had the sense her body didn’t know what to do with emotion, or with tears. She had still not said the thing she truly feared: that Siuan was afraid of her, that she thought Moiraine enjoyed hurting her, or that she wouldn’t be able to stop her. Could it be true? This whole time, had they only been playing at lovers, with Siuan too afraid of her to say no? 

 

Siuan didn’t say anything for a long time. At last she said: “Did you mean all that?” 

 

“Yes,” she said, trying for stern and failing. “Especially that part about you being stupid.” 

 

Siuan gave her a wan smile, and Moiraine couldn’t help herself and smiled back. 

 

Later that night, Siuan reached for her and curled up in her arms with such complete trust that Moiraine felt her heart stop. There was something childlike and almost playful in it, Siuan’s arms tight around her waist and her cheek nestled against Moiraine’s shoulder. She had never seen Siuan behave this way with anyone, and she realized that Siuan was just as starved for affection as she herself was, that just like her, Siuan was crying out to be loved and to be touched. A part of her had always discounted that need because Siuan joked so easily and got along well with the other girls, and because she seemed to be so fond of her family and where she had come from. But Siuan’s world had been a hard, physical one of work and few comforts. She had never really been allowed to be a little girl. 

 

Moiraine spoke to her gently as she held her and kissed her hair. She was not used to holding others, and could only barely remember being held this way, once, in her own childhood, but she did her best, Siuan’s need outstripping her own reticence. Siuan hummed and made a soft noise and nestled more deeply into her arms. She was neither full bodied nor overly frail, and yet her form seemed to turn molten in sleep, as if her skeleton, too, had begun to dream. 

 

Moiraine kissed the top of her forehead, examining the helplessness of her undefended face, the shocking youngness of it in sleep. She smelled warm, a sweet mellow smell that had no referent Moiraine could name although her body recognized it instantly. Before they were lovers she was always smelling traces of it on her pillows, even on her clothes. The smallest hint of scent, like music heard from far away. Now, when they made love, she buried her face in Siuan’s neck and inhaled deeply, touching the skin with her tongue, amazed at even this small luxury. 

 

She thought suddenly that, though she might never truly be good, she might behave the way a good person might. She could do that forever, so  long as she didn’t succumb to the same rages as her uncles and grandparents. It was such a simple idea, so piercing in its clarity, that she was surprised that she had not thought of it before. But now, with Siuan beside her, so helpless in her arms, she saw the incredible truth of it. 

 

It was such a small thing she had done that night, no more than basic decency, yet a part of her did feel glad she had proven herself in this ordinary way, that she had done something to earn Siuan’s trust. She thought of all of the times she had lain awake watching Siuan’s sleeping body and thinking with horror of all of the ways one might dispatch a sleeping girl. How easy it would be, if she wanted, to withdraw a knife and slash the cords of her throat. Any number of needles and small implements applied to a place on the skull that could cause paralysis or instant death. How easy to place a hand over Siuan’s mouth and overpower her in that way, knowing that by the time she woke from the loss of breath it would be too late. 

 

But she had never actually done any of those things. Even that afternoon, as they had made love, she had seen the sudden flash of pain in Siuan’s eyes, the grimace she had tried so hard to suppress. If Moiraine had been like her uncles, if she was someone who liked causing pain, she might not have stopped. But she had. That had to mean something, didn’t it? She had always seen herself as inherently cruel, so much so that her daily actions made little difference. But perhaps she was not so fated. Perhaps the person you were was a matter of choosing. 

 

***





If others knew of the shift in their relationship, they were discreet about it. If anything, she thought, most of the Tower had likely believed them to be a couple long before so much as a kiss had passed between them. But now, something about the conversations was easier, perhaps because the others could sense Siuan’s joy at having her close, or because she moved in a haze of love that made her gregarious, more willing to speak about herself, if only a little, or to loose some small phrase of affirmation. 

 

There were still some girls who, although they liked Siuan, very much did not like her, and sometimes that was because Moiraine didn’t like them, either. There were other girls, like Tarna, who didn’t seem to like anyone. But many of the others, like Sheriam or Ellid, who she had been convinced despised her, seemed, at second glance, to be cautiously friendly. 

 

Moiraine doubted she would ever achieve the deep intimacy that bound groups of women together. That connection, that closeness, seemed fated for Siuan alone, not because she wanted it to be, or believed one’s lover must be elevated above all else, but because she still seemed to possess that innate quality that seemed to repel intimacy. But at least the other girls tolerated her. Some of them even seemed fond of her. 

 

There were still many she thought featherbrained or far too cruel, and others who seemed so dull she could not have imagined how they had gained the ring at all. But the first time she realized that Sheriam and Coladara had waited for her in the dining hall instead of going to their lessons together, without her, she had almost wanted to cry. Normally only Siuan would wait for her, and the small gesture made her feel pleased, if awkward and foolish. 

 

She had been in the Tower for four years already, but had never really thought of herself as belonging to a group. She belonged to Siuan, and to herself, but otherwise was an outsider. She had never taken classes in the Old Tongue, and her strength in the One Power had grown so quickly that she had moved through classes much faster than the other girls, and when her father died she stopped caring much about anything at all. She still did everything that was expected of her—that went without saying—but the chatter of the people around her seemed ridiculously mundane. 

 

That was when she found she could no longer cry. She wanted to, desperately, but she was afraid. She knew she could not allow herself to lose control of her body even for an instant. Instead she would step out of herself and drift away, to the calm, cold place she went when she channeled, though her senses, rather than being heightened, seemed to reach her garbled and dispersed, like ink droplets in a glass of water. She would lie very still and feel the sounds billowing out and drifting down towards her like the undersea creatures that Siuan told her were called “jellyfish” and “octopus.” 

 

Then, later, she would get very angry. The feeling came out of nowhere. It was like walking into a wall. She was always getting sent to Merean with the promise of a switching, and Merean, whether she beat her or didn’t beat her, would always threaten to send her back down to the earlier Novice classes if she couldn’t control her channelling, which terrified her. Those were Elaida’s classes, and she knew Elaida would switch her, at the very least, and likely do worse than switching. And through it all she could not even cry. 

 

Many of the Cairhienen girls had been frightened of her when she first came to the Tower, and now most of the other Novices were, too, and at least some of the Accepted, though they’d never admit it. She had made a lot of enemies in that time. It was why Myrelle still wouldn’t speak to her unless Siuan was there. But now most of the others would talk with her; and not just talk to her but ask her opinions, or wait for her at dinnertime if she was still eating, even if the rest of them had finished their meals. She didn’t think she would ever have the seemingly natural rapport that most of them seemed to have with each other, but it was wonderful to be included—to be thought of at all. 

 

But even so, it seemed some of the Accepted had noticed far more about her than she realized. One day Alanna turned to her in the library and shot her a confiding look. 

 

“So,” she said. “You and Siuan.” 

 

Moiraine certain if it was a question or a statement, and realized she had paused too long to lie, even if she wanted to. 

 

“Yes,” she said simply. It surprised her how good it felt to say it, and she smiled a little, despite herself. All these past weeks the most wonderful lightness had been uncoiling inside her—how had she not told anyone until now? 

 

Alanna smiled back. “That’s good,” she said. “I’m happy for you.  And for Siuan. She’s liked you for a very long time, you know. That was my first thought when—I thought, how happy Siuan must be.” 

 

“She told you that?” And then, because she couldn’t help herself: “Is that what you all talk about, when you’re whispering together.” 

 

Another smile. “Other people can keep secrets too, my friend.” 

 

She felt a burst of delighted surprise. She wasn’t sure if anyone save Siuan had called her a friend in all of her time at the Tower, and she had always liked Alanna, who was funny and very pretty, all sleek dark hair and rounded softness, and worldly in a way that made Moiraine feel, at times, faintly desperate for her approval, though she knew it was ridiculous. What did it matter, really, if Alanna liked her or not?

 

“Between you and me,” she went on, “is she a good kisser?” 

 

That was still too much, too soon, and Moiraine felt herself flush a deep scarlet, even as she recognized this for what it was—was an extended hand, a ticket into the world of intimate camaraderie that passed between girls—and was grateful for it. 

 

“Well, I like kissing her,” she said, coldly, perhaps more coldly than she’d intended. It was a decidedly neutral answer, of the kind the Sisters gave when they didn’t want to answer something directly, but she found herself smiling a little despite herself, and for Alanna, that seemed to be enough, because she grinned, and turned back to her reading. And the matter was closed. 

 

She had expected talking about herself and Siuan would be humiliating, even terrifying. But there was something oddly pleasant about it. Ever since they had become lovers, she had felt there was something radiant inside her, something burning and warm and molten only just contained by the contours of her person and which threatened at any moment to spring free. She felt she was a wineskin filling and filling with pleasure, so much that she didn’t think her body could hold it. Perhaps it was so for other people, too, and that was why they spoke of it so often. 

 

What she and Siuan did together was so different from anything she had imagined when people talked of sex—erotic, certainly, but also gentle. Her mind returned to that kindness with a wash of perpetual disbelief. That it could be for her! Sometimes they would pretend to be lovers on their wedding night, with her as a lord or a peasant boy and Siuan as the virgin bride. Other times Siuan would pretend to be the Mistress of Novices and think up punishments for her. Both of them gave her an odd, furtive pleasure, braiding guilt and desire into a wonderful warm urgency; and she would feel again the sensation she so often felt with Siuan—that the two of them were voyagers together, walking hand in hand into a strange landscape. 

 

“Do you remember,” said Siuan one day, as they two of them lay abed in a spill of watery late Saban sunlight, “What they told us as Novices, about relationships between girls?”

 

It had been explained to them, in their first year at the Tower, that while relationships with men were anathema for Novices and Accepted alike, they would not be discouraged from finding companionship with each other. Moiraine had spent the next several seconds puzzling out exactly what ‘not be discouraged’ could mean. Was that explicit encouragement? Or would they simply not be punished if they were found out? Or, and this was far more likely, would they be punished regardless, but the remark was simply an acknowledgement that these things were bound to happen? And how would a woman even begin to court another woman? 

 

Siuan beside her had only snorted. “Companionship my ass,” she’d said. “A fuck is a fuck.” Her remark had earned them both a sharp look, but thankfully no worse. Many of the other girls looked just as confused as they did, and some of them—mostly the ones from smaller villages—had been giggling uncomfortably, or seemed scarcely to have understood at all, while others still exchanged knowing smirks.

 

Moiraine nodded. “I remember.” Even with all they had shared, knowledge of the Tower’s view on pillow-friendships still ran as a thin current of anxiety beneath her skin. There was, after all, still the possibility that Siuan might think what they did together was casual, inconsequential—no more than the actions taken by two close friends to relieve the tension of Tower life. But it was a decidedly small fear. She realized with a start that, in the few months they had been together, she had begun to see Siuan’s care for her as a bedrock in her life, as much a part of her as her own body, and that knowledge steadied her tongue. “This feels different, somehow,” she said. 

 

“Yes,” said Siuan. She was smiling. “Yes, it is different.” And she took Moiraine’s hand in hers and gave it a quick squeeze, brusque and casual, and yet she still felt something warm move between them, as if honey was flowing from Siuan’s body into her own in place where their fingers touched, and neither of them said the word, but she knew they were both thinking of it. 










Epilogue

 

Every second month or so, there is a gathering of Tairens in the White Tower. Moiraine knows little of these meetings—where they’re held, or what happens at them; whether they’re for all novitiates, or whether attendance falls along Novice or Accepted lines. Siuan told her once about sneaking into the city and drinking at a mead hall for sailors, a rough place, but one where the food and boasting of dockhands reminds her of home. It was, she said, the only place where two ones on a six-sided dice are called “black pearls” instead of “the Dark One’s eyes.” 

 

Moiraine knows belonging is tricky for Tairens, for whole “home” is a complex and painful web. They’re not quite as insular as the Atha’an Miere, but, she knows, there’s a certain camaraderie that forms among and between them. People from a place where a fundamental aspect of their nature marks them as outsiders, though the mourning-white dresses of the Novices and Accepted—made to flatten origin, conceal personality—are a poor substitute at best. So that night, as Siuan pulls a borrowed cloak over the distinctive paleness of her Accepted’s clothes, preparing, perhaps, to steal once more into the city, Moiraine goes to bed alone. 

 

It’s the first time in the months they’ve been together that she hasn’t had Siuan beside her as she fell asleep. Ever since their first kiss they’ve been all but inseparable. It seems at least one point on their bodies is always touching. 

 

Without Siuan, Moiraine knows, all of her distrust and frightened watchfulness will return. She can imagine it so easily. Another girl, one with tattoos both similar to and entirely unique from Siuan’s own, with whom Siuan never has to explain anything, for once. The two of them slipping together into a dialect for which Moiraine has no referent and which calls upon creatures and places and forces of nature she does not know. In this vision the girl laughs, her hand first on Siuan’s shoulder, then the small of her back. How easy it would be. The merest motion of an exhale. 

 

Then she imagines, as she so often does, Siuan laughing at her, explaining to a captive audience all of Moiraine’s peculiarities, her frigidity, her sexual incompetence, the flaws in the shape and morphology of her body, which she tries not to think about, but, based on the gossip of other women, is certain must be there. The blunders, so countless they are impossible to name, that she has made without knowing. 

 

She has had some version of these thoughts even before she and Siuan were lovers, and lately, they’ve been easier and easier to disprove and let drift away. But now, alone again, it’s like she returns to the person she was before, when she lay awake fevered with desire so out of reach it felt nearly mythic in quality. The girl who spent years denying herself touch because she knew, deep down, she was just like the rest of her family that she claimed to hate. Who allowed herself pleasure only through a bunched-up pillow between her thighs, because if she reached down and touched that aching, alien part of herself, it would mean admitting that most pitiable and abhorrent of truths: that she wanted someone without being wanted back. 

 

But then she remembers the look of wonder the first time—indeed, every time—Siuan touches her, as though she still can’t believe it. That little dip in the line of her brow the moment before she reaches climax, and how she trusts Moiraine completely in that flash of complete vulnerability, her body stiffening, opening, curling upwards. The way she’ll wrap her arms around Moiraine’s waist sometimes like a little girl. That she has, without prompting or persuasion, called Moiraine brave. 

 

One time Siuan had noticed her habit of rubbing her thumb and index finger together as she read. It was something her governesses used to rap her knuckles for back in Cairhien and Taringail said made her look simple. But Siuan had only taken Moiraine’s hands in her own and kissed them, a small gesture that had struck her to her very core. She was at a loss to explain its importance to her, the outsized impact she knew it would have on her life. Being witnessed, even for a moment, in the indignity of humanness. 

 

She realizes now that a part of her has begun to expect, with a certainty that approaches metaphysical fact, that she and Siuan will find their way back to each other. Her body knows this, the way an animal, at certain times of day, will expect to be fed, a part of her always arching towards the space of Siuan’s absence. And, most wonderful of all, in that small part of her that is not afraid, she knows that a part of Siuan is arching towards her, too. She, who comes from a place entirely without trust and nearly without honor, knows this to be true by the simple fact that nothing has happened in her life to disprove it. Never, in the years she and Siuan have known each other has Siuan been anything but gentle and good to her. 

 

Later that night she wakes as Siuan pushes back the covers, leaning on one elbow to rise into a kiss. The warmth of Siuan’s body enfolds her, the sweet smell. Moiraine breathes deeply. How unfathomable it is, for one raised in the Sun Palace, that she has grown so used to tenderness that her body curves with complete trust towards a figure in the night. How impossible, but how wonderful too. 

 

And, though she doesn’t always feel that she deserves it, Moiraine will not turn from love when it is offered to her. She will run towards it.